In 2015, DMI ran a one-year radio campaign (with eight months of broadcasting) on behaviours linked to child survival in eight provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The campaign, funded by UNICEF, IMA World Health (with DFID funding) and Save the Children, aimed to reduce child mortality by promoting healthy behaviours through radio adverts broadcast on 33 community radio stations. The campaign failed to achieve its main objective (changing behaviours linked to child survival), although it did have an impact on knowledge related to most of the target behaviours.

DMI has received a $400,000 award from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to test whether a mass media family planning campaign increases contraceptive use among men and women of reproductive age living in rural areas of Burkina Faso, using a randomised controlled trial (RCT). The funds are being provided as stage two funding from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) programme. 

DMI is seeking funds to launch INTENSAÚDE, a planned health mass media campaign supported by the Ministry of Health in Mozambique. The campaign will build on the recent results of a randomised controlled trial in Burkina Faso, conducted by DMI and evaluated by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This showed that a radio campaign had a significant impact on several target behaviours, notably treatment-seeking for children with symptoms of pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria.

DMI recently launched a four-year randomised control trial in Burkina Faso to evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of a mass media campaign on family planning. To target our campaign effectively, we sent our scriptwriters to live in a rural village for a week. Here is why.

The World Food Programme is funding DMI to run a capacity strengthening project in Manica province of Mozambique, which will help community radio stations to design and run behaviour change campaigns to improve outcomes related to nutrition. ​

DMI has been awarded $4.5m by the Global Innovation Fund and a private donor to run a second randomised controlled trial. Like our first RCT, it will take place in Burkina Faso, where the very localised media environment permits a media RCT. It will test the impact of a three-year community radio campaign on family planning behaviours (mainly the uptake of modern contraceptive methods).