SUCCESS STORIES

A Vision of Health for Uganda – The Good Life Campaign

Imagine a Uganda where families and communities are empowered to protect and improve their health; where markets for health products and services are vibrant and expanding; and where consumer access to affordable products and services steadily improve and is increasingly sustainable.

This is the vision of AFFORD, an ambitious and innovative health marketing initiative begun in 2005 led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs and funded by the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).

AFFORD is a consortium of established, effective organizations able to tackle the logistics of a large-scale response to major health threats such as malaria. Together, the consortium has influence over the entire supply line and distribution of products necessary for the prevention and treatment of malaria, such as long lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) and Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT), the newest and most affective drug for malaria treatment. Working closely with the Ministry of Health, AFFORD also trains health workers at all levels to facilitate adoption of the best health practices and current policies and to assist expansion of health services into rural and underserved districts.

Additionally, AFFORD employs an innovative multi-channeled communications strategy to increase demand among communities and families for health producing commodities and approaches, a vital tool in combating malaria.

“Shifting a populace toward health seeking behaviors requires constant reinforcement of positive messages and models,” says Kojo Lokko, AFFORD’s director in Kampala. “We must be creative and multi-dimensional to overcome barriers to good health in a family or village. It is human nature to be skeptical of change, even in the face of death.”

To that end, AFFORD and its partners devised a common communications platform called ‘The Good Life’ campaign. The core message of The ‘Good Life’ is that health is desirable, attainable, a basic right, and the responsibility of individuals and society. All activities and media including the campaign’s centerpiece, an interactive quiz show broadcast on television and radio from community based locations, reinforce the practices, products and services that produce good health.

The Good Life campaign further engages people at the community level through a social network of well-respected and influential people who have become known as Popular Opinion Leaders (POLs). These individuals receive training and tools such as colorful flip charts and laminated posters they can use to initiate dialogue with peers and community groups around health issues like malaria.

In the rural parts of Uganda, educating and convincing villagers to adopt malaria prevention and treatment practices are major hurdles, so POLs become instrumental in malaria activities, especially the distribution of LLINs. POLs encourage beneficiaries to sleep under the nets, advise people to take the correct treatment for malaria and recommend pregnant women go for Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT).

As AFFORD enters its third year, Uganda’s health infrastructure is gaining strength and its citizens are feeling the benefits. In the Unyama Camp for Internally Displaced Persons in northern Uganda, Nancy sits with her two sons and one-week old daughter beside their LLIN. Her net was one of approximately 285,000 distributed by AFFORD through funding from PMI to antenatal care clinics in 24 northern districts.

“I received the treatment at the health clinic to keep me from getting malaria while I was pregnant, and I didn’t get it,” Nancy says happily. “This is my family’s first net because we couldn’t afford to buy one. No one in my family has been sick with malaria since we’ve been sleeping under the net.”

For Nancy and her family, the “good life” just got better.