Learn how we use evidence-based behaviour change campaigns to improve and save lives in low-income countries.
Learn about how DMI brings together two different worlds: demonstrable scientific practice and creative storytelling.
Location Child survival
Having saved 8,500 lives over two years during Scaling up Lives Saved in Mozambique, we continued to disseminate essential child health messaging in four provinces of Mozambique through Salvar Vidas.
Salvar Vidas distributed life-saving campaign content via Rádio Moçambique’s provincial antennas, 33 community radio stations, and the community health worker network (CHW) using an innovative mobile app, UpScale.
Mozambique
Child survival and maternal health – promoting treatment-seeking behaviours for malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea among parents of children aged over 5. Also encouraging bed net use and antenatal care attendance.
43 x 1-minute radio spots
6 audio visual films, uploaded onto the Ministry of Health’s UpScale mobile platform
Our campaign ran from November 2022 to January 2024 on 37 radio stations across Zambezia, Nampula, Tete, and Sofala provinces.
4 million people
Science
When our child survival RCT indicated that a national scale-up in Mozambique could save thousands of lives of children under-5, we set out to achieve just that. Intensaúde – our first child survival campaign in Mozambique – delivered a national radio campaign promoting treatment-seeking behaviours and saved approximately 4,000 lives.
Following this success, we delivered a 2-year follow on where we continued to deliver engaging, high-impact content to listeners throughout Mozambique. We expanded our campaign to include messages encouraging bed net use and antenatal care attendance, and also produced audio-visual content to work alongside our radio spots. Modelling using the well-established Lives Saved Tool (LiST) indicates that this three-year campaign will have saved over 8,500 under five lives and over 90 maternal lives.
Using our unrestricted funds, we committed to continuing our high-impact child survival work in Mozambique again through Salvar Vidas. The implementation provinces were Zambezia, Nampula, Tete, and Sofala, selected because of their high under-5 mortality rates.
Stories
During Scaling up Lives Saved in Mozambique, we conducted a pilot study where CHWs showed DMI’s malaria prevention video via UpScale (an interactive mobile app that CHWs use throughout Mozambique) to community members. A qualitative evaluation found that using videos during health consultations was more effective than verbal communication alone. This approach increased efficiency, as workers could elaborate on video content and answer questions instead of relying solely on verbal communication.
Our research revealed that a common perception among the community is that the information shared by CHWs is their personal opinion. Our evaluation showed that using UpScale as a distribution platform boosts message acceptance and credibility. The DMI films uploaded onto the platform are endorsed by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and so are seen as official guidance, thereby enhancing community trust of the messages.
Saturation
Salvar Vidas embodies our commitment to take to scale our most cost-effective and impactful interventions. By building on the success and impact of several other DMI projects implemented in Mozambique, we ensured that our lifesaving campaigns would continue to reach the highest number of people possible within our intervention zones.
We are also optimistic that our sustained investment in the UpScale platform will continue to have a positive impact. By uploading DMI’s bespoke content onto the app, we equip CHWs with valuable tools to support their work, as well as building community trust of CHWs and the essential health information they spread.
This project was funded by unrestricted funds received from individual donors.