COVID-19 IPPF Innovation and Best Practice: Digitalizing For Young People in Mali
New
Digitally-delivered Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for the youth in Mali
As low- and middle-income countries transition from paper to digital systems, family planning programs can benefit from unprecedented opportunities to improve services. Investments in digital health tools have expanded exponentially, but information on what works—and what does not— remains limited and scattered. As investments have increased, digital applications and data fragmentation have proliferated, but stakeholders are moving towards more coordinated efforts to scale digital health solutions, support countries’ digital health infrastructure, and share evidence-based learnings.
This Digital Health Compendium enables users to explore case studies across a range of digital health technologies used to enhance family planning programs mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in other regions of the world. Digital health applications in family planning programs can be broadly classified as those affecting demand generation, service delivery, supply chain management, and the policy and enabling environment. In many low- and middle-income countries, digital health innovations were adopted earlier in other health sectors, including HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and noncommunicable disease prevention and response. As a result, much of the impact evidence is likewise restricted to those sectors. To advance greater adoption of digital technology in family planning programs, more data and information on the challenges, opportunities, scalability, and results are needed. This compendium aims to consolidate emerging information and data on applications of digital technology in family planning programs to inform adoption and scale-up of successful approaches.
All of the case studies were submitted by the implementing organizations and include a description of the digital health intervention, program context, and, if available, important findings and lessons learned through rigorous evaluations or program data. The compendium facilitates a quick search for case studies based on the target user for digital health intervention, building block for the digital health enabling environment, family planning program classification, and country location. The case studies give policy and program decisionmakers insights on real-world applications of digital health, promising practices, challenges, and other lessons that can be applied to current and future programs.
New
Digitally-delivered Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for the youth in Mali
Alden Nouga-Ngog Chief, Strategic Partnership & Development International Planned Parenthood Federation London, UK, [email protected] +1 6174129746
International Planned Parenthood Federation
Ongoing
Malian Association for the Protection of Promotion of the Family (AMPPF)
Supported by a variety of unrestricted and restricted funders
Alden Nouga-Ngog Chief, Strategic Partnership & Development International Planned Parenthood Federation London, UK, [email protected] +1 6174129746
Client
Services and Applications
Demand Generation
Digitally-delivered Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for the youth in Mali
The COVID-19 pandemic in Mali saw numerous restrictions in the country, with schools forced to close and the prevention of face-to-face gatherings causing a halt to Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). Holistic, developmental, and age-appropriate CSE programs enable young people to make informed decisions about their sexuality and health, while building life skills and promoting gender equality.
As a country with one of the highest fertility rates in the Africa region [1] and where only a quarter of Malian girls complete high school, CSE is an essential service of IPPF’s Member Association in Mali – the Malian Association for the Protection of Promotion of the Family (AMPPF) – for young people, both inside and outside school. While AMPFF had expanded youth services through its networks from 2018, COVID-19 initially reduced its service activities by over 50 per cent. In response, AMPFF got innovative in using digital tools to engage with young people and continue delivering CSE, to ensure that adolescent birth rates did not spike as collateral damage of COVID-19.
In response to COVID-19, AMPFF quickly converted its face-to-face CSE model to hold online sessions on digital platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. These digital CSE sessions are conducted weekly and cover different themes such as puberty and consent for Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services. AMPPF now works with the Youth Action Movement (YAM) members and trained community-based peer educators as youth champions who facilitate digital CSE through WhatsApp groups and interactively work through the modules with the youth groups. This interactive component of the WhatsApp learning group enriches learning, ensures that discussions support the learning sessions and allows space to answer all questions. Further, to facilitate sessions and keep groups connected, AMPPF assists with the provision of connection devices and internet packages. This enables the smooth delivery of interactive and successful sessions which are tailored to age and setting. These Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) education programmes are broadcasted via a dedicated web-based AMPPF TV channel on YouTube and Facebook.
Firstly, the AMPPF team trained 70 teachers on the seven components of CSE, as well as trained 229 students on various combinations of these, through social and digital platforms. This has allowed for the expansion of education provision and awareness raising activities.
Secondly, to complement the online sessions, awareness campaigns on SRHR are being conducted by radio and social media. With the training of 70 teachers and 229 students on CSE, and the shift to social and digital platforms, this resulted in 160,288 young people being reached with components of digital CSE and online services, enabling AMPPF to work with the largest group of young people they have ever served.
– The digitalization of CSE strategies has demonstrated the successful reach of online services, making the case for governments to develop guidelines for delivering online CSE and to provide technical assistance and capacity building support. Digital CSE interventions are likely to be more beneficial when mainstreamed and conducted along with online classes during routine school hours and should complement, rather than replace, face-to-face delivery.
– Online access is costly for young people and low literacy levels among young people can limit the effectiveness for digital CSE interventions. However, there is potential to increase telemedicine access and digital educational platforms if future financial resources can be found.
– Young people have expressed interest in strengthening their knowledge of online CSE, however, there should be limits to group sizes.
– The interactive debates during online sessions were useful to help young people engage with, and expand upon, CSE themes.
With the youth population being exceptionally impacted by COVID-19 through limiting their mobility and access to SRHR, the impact of AMPPF’s digital innovations in ensuring the continuity of CSE cannot be overstated. Through harnessing youth social networks through Facebook, WhatsApp, Web TV and YouTube, AMPPF helped to mitigate the impacts of school closures and heightened vulnerabilities of youth by ensuring that many were equipped with knowledge on sexual and reproductive health and their rights. In seeing the success of these innovations, AMPPF will now formalize learning on digital platforms for CSE. This involves developing tools to provide meaningful youth engagement for online learning, sharing information and service provision.
Development of an App to facilitate the content and learning will additionally make the service more accessible for youth. Further, peer to peer learning opportunities will be explored within the IPPF Africa Region including the Togo Member Association and the Center of Excellence (CoE) for youth, who have achieved great success delivering online CSE. Lastly, AMPPF will aim to increase their impact by engaging relevant stakeholders in health and education to ensure that policies are in place to support CSE work in the country for sustainable change.
United Nations (2019), UN Population Division Data Portal: Interactive access to global demographic indicator, viewed 7th October 2021, https://population.un.org/dataportal/home