Amplio is honored to be a winner in the inaugural Anthem Awards! Our winning entry, Ghana COVID-19 Awareness Campaign: Reaching Communities During a Public Health Crisis won a gold Anthem Award in the Responsibility Technology category for community outreach and engagement. We are humbled to join an impressive lineup of for-profit and nonprofit organizations working to make a social impact.
See the 2022 Anthem Awards winners >
About Our Project
In April 2020, Amplio partnered with UNICEF Ghana and Ghana Health Service (GHS) on a COVID-19 awareness campaign in eight districts in the Upper West Region. Led by the Amplio Ghana team, the project distributed Amplio Talking Books to community health nurses and volunteers to help them reach rural communities with critical COVID-19 health information. With Talking Books, community health workers are able to share consistent and accurate health messages more efficiently and effectively.
Amplio's COVID-19 response was supported by Arm and Volo Foundation.
Goals and Objectives
The campaign aimed to help Ghana’s overburdened community health workers reach rural communities and deliver accurate and consistent health messages about COVID-19 and meningitis. Many community health nurses do not speak the local language so we needed to overcome that barrier too.
Results and Impact
The campaign reached 218,367 people with accurate public health information. Nurses said message delivery was more efficient and effective. District health directors asked to use Talking Books for ongoing health education in vulnerable districts. Our GHS and UNICEF partnership will continue.
Building on Other Talking Book Programs and Community Health Campaigns
Our COVID-19 awareness campaign built on the success of previous Talking Book projects to promote community health outreach in underserved, rural communities. In 2018, Centre for Behaviour Change and Communication, a behavior change solutions provider based in Nairobi, piloted the use of Talking Books to improve access to quality health education and services for semi-nomadic pastoralist families in Kenya as part of USAID's Afya Timiza project. (Watch a project video here.) At control sites where community health volunteers (CHVs) used Talking Books to deliver health messages, rural health centers saw a 110% increase in pregnant women attending all four antenatal care visits and a significant increase in skilled deliveries.
In Northern Ghana, UNICEF has used Talking Books to support its communication for development (C4D) initiatives since 2013. For UNICEF Ghana's program, Talking Books are deployed through household rotation and group listening models. In 2019, Amplio, UNICEF, and GHS conducted a Talking Book pilot at 15 Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds in Jirapa District, Upper West Region. For the CHPS pilot, Talking Books included messages on maternal, newborn, and child health, as well as birth registration, kindergarten enrollment, social protection, hygiene and sanitation, and other topics to promote good health and well-being (SDG 3).
Recognized as a Digital Tool to Adapt to Public Health Emergencies and Risk Communication
As a result of our work in Ghana, the Amplio Talking Book is included in the USAID-funded Map & Match project, a resource to help the global health community leverage and adapt existing digital tools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Specifically, the Amplio Talking Book is included in the Ghana country brief as a tool for learning and training, risk communication, and community engagement.
CHPS Talking Book Program Expansion
In response to our COVID-19 awareness campaign, GHS district health directors requested to continue using Talking Books to support community health outreach and education in rural districts. For the CHPS project, Talking Book content covers a range of topics, including maternal and child health, mental health, and preventive care. In addition, the devices can be quickly updated in response to other emerging health issues in the region, including recent outbreaks of polio and yellow fever.
In Ghana, the Amplio Talking Book was used to share accurate COVID-19 information.
About the Anthem Awards
The Anthem Awards, a Webby Awards initiative, recognizes the breadth of social good work (online and offline) around the globe by honoring the organizations, brands, and people creating impact. By amplifying the voices that spark global change, the Anthem Awards are defining a new benchmark for impactful work that inspires others to take action in their communities. Founding partners include the Ad Council, Born This Way Foundation, Feeding America, GLAAD, Mozilla, NAACP, NRDC, WWF, and XQ.