Health media campaigns with Development Media International

A large share of child deaths in low-income countries turn on decisions made at home: whether a feverish child is taken to a clinic and how quickly, whether hands are washed before food, whether a pregnancy is monitored. Clinics cannot make those decisions. Mass media can reach the households that make them, at a cost per person no in-person program can approach.

Broadcasting health advice is easy and mostly useless. The design details are what carry the effect: spots air on the stations people already listen to, in the languages they actually speak, at high enough frequency to register, and they are written as entertaining stories rather than public service announcements, because nobody changes a habit for a lecture.

Behaviour change campaigns have a long history of being credited with results nobody measured. This program is unusual in having run randomized controlled trials on its own methodology, which is what turned mass media from a plausible idea into a documented one, and which lets the most effective campaigns be identified and scaled to millions of listeners. The organization behind it is Development Media International.

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