Protection, truth and playing your part

On 1st April 2020, the  World Health Organization (WHO) recommended  that the principal activities supported by the Ascend programme, including campaigns for mass drug administration (MDA), surgical case-finding and disease prevalence surveys, be postponed.  

Thanks to UK aid’s encouragement, the Ascend consortium partners were able to draw on their combined years of expertise and consult with national ministries of health to support the COVID-19 response in 11 programme countries.

Supported activities varied by programme country, but included mass media behaviour change campaigns on COVID-19, training of health workers, improved monitoring and supervision, and the provision of consumables to prevent health systems from being overwhelmed.

Here we reveal the innovative and creative process behind 'protection, truth and playing your part', the Ascend programme's mass media behaviour change campaign, set to reach tens of millions of people across Africa.

Following the strategic guidance of media experts  M&C Saatchi World Services , our campaign development process began with scoping sessions and focus groups to help determine the successes, shortfalls and gaps within existing communications in each campaign country.

Working with ministries of health, these exercises proved invaluable. They provided recommendations not only on relevant media channels and the quantity of materials required, but also linguistic and religious considerations, and necessary accessibility adaptations such as the need for captions or signers on videos.

Alongside the scoping exercises, a communications strategy was then created for each campaign country, using local insights from the ministries and Ascend country teams.

Once the strategies were approved, local agencies were briefed to present potential creative routes, drawing on emotional and cultural context to increase uptake of prevention behaviours. All strategies were based on one of three themes: 'truth', 'play your part' and 'protection', and considered differences in knowledge, language, religion, local dress and representation.

We presented revised creative briefs back to the ministries multiple times before commencing production of assets, such as filming, photography, illustration and copywriting.

It is estimated that over 137 million people were reached through TV, radio and SMS messaging, further to our billboard, leaflet and social media campaigning.

To track the effectiveness of our approach, we conducted nearly 3,000 telephone-based evaluation survey across all countries, supplemented by 30 self-administered web surveys targeting people with disabilities in Ghana and Nigeria.

As noted in this chart below, the vast majority of respondents exposed to the campaign during their daily lives reported that they subsequently changed or would consider changing their behaviours.

1. Shifting to emergency response: Ascend is a health development programme, not an emergency humanitarian response programme. The onset of COVID-19 required a short-term operational shift to meet immediate emergency needs, whilst still ensuring that programme teams could continue vital health systems strengthening work ready for the resumption of postponed activities. To meet this challenge, it was necessary to deploy personnel with experience in humanitarian assistance to lead activities.
2. Clarity and simplicity of communication approach: Framing a coherent message in an emergency situation is critical because an individual's capacity to retain detailed information may be diminished. We found the most effective response was to frame messages around one piece of key information. This makes the message more memorable and likely to 'stick'.
3. Ensuring inclusivity: All materials were required to be accessible in terms of format, size, readability and typography, with further provision made for variable literacy levels, minority languages and the inclusion of signers. To ensure our materials met these criteria, Sightsavers inclusion experts were brought in to advise the development team on best practices for mainstreaming inclusivity, such as making sure people with disabilities were included in our sample groups.

The Ascend COVID-19 response ran until November 2020. Feedback from programme countries on the impact of this work has been very promising. For example, Amoah Mensah-Shelter, a head teacher from Ghana who participated in COVID-19 trainings said:

“I feel so happy, I just feel better. If everybody is safe, if everybody is making an effort, then it means you are safe, your family might also be safe". 

Ascend is very proud of what has been achieved in so short a time. Our prime focus now is to share our learning widely, so our campaign approaches may be used and adapted to support current and future programme activities.