The Digital Medic 2021 Program Summary outlines our work over the past year — the health education content we created and the communities it reached, our research findings, and the invaluable relationships that made it all possible. View the program summary here.

At Digital Medic, we believe that health education is a key part of addressing global health disparities. In 2021, our team continued creating and evaluating high-need digital health education content. Much of our work surrounded the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but we also continued to prioritize maternal and child health topics such as stunting prevention, breastfeeding awareness, and more.

As always, collaboration played a vital role in making our work possible. We are grateful for the opportunity to engage with over 40 supporters and collaborators worldwide.

A few highlights from the report:

Reach

  • From 2016-2021, our content reached over 27 million learners around the world through Digital Medic and collaborator platforms.
  • From 2020-2021, over 9.7 million learners accessed COVID-19 educational content on Digital Medic platforms alone.
Content Releases

Supporting Community Health Workers (CHWs) to make their voices heard

With the Community Health Impact Coalition, we created a free digital course entitled Advocacy Training for Community Health Workers, followed by a complementary Facilitator Guide for group learning sessions. The course equips CHWs with the advocacy and storytelling skills to elevate their voices in decision-making conversations.

Addressing new challenges related to intimate partner violence (IPV)

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges for IPV survivors seeking support and resources. With this in mind, we worked with Stanford University’s Department of Emergency Medicine and Next Door Solutions to launch a video series for health workers, community members, and survivors on the topic of COVID-19 and Intimate Partner Violence.

Raising awareness about stunting prevention through storytelling

Currently, one in four children in South Africa is stunted. With the Grow Great Campaign, we added four videos to our story-based series on stunting prevention. The new videos cover:

Outlining snakebite prevention tips for high-risk communities

The World Health Organization estimates that 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes every year. In Eswatini, most of the population is at high risk of exposure to a venomous snakebite. With the Eswatini Antivenom Foundation, we created an animated video that explains how to prevent and treat snakebites.

Ongoing COVID-19 response

We added new highly-produced videos to our adaptable COVID-19 Toolkit. The videos have been widely shared, translated, and adapted, including for World Mental Health Day with UNICEF. We also published 26 videos in our “Viral Facts” series on YouTube, featuring Stanford Medicine faculty discussing variants, vaccines, COVID in children, tips for home care, and more.

Evaluation

With the Philani Maternal, Child Health and Nutrition Trust, we measured the effects of a video education intervention on exclusive breastfeeding practices among new mothers through a randomized controlled trial in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Findings from the study indicate that the video-based intervention was just as effective as in-person counseling in promoting exclusive breastfeeding. The intervention also reduced the workload of participating community health workers, giving them more time to conduct other health-related tasks. The results of the 1.5 year study were published in PLOS Medicine.

Other impact evaluation work is ongoing.

Read the full 2021 Program Summary to learn more, and subscribe to our quarterly email newsletter for regular updates.