Educational Program

E-vouchers for veggies: reducing nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through video games and storytelling to promote behaviour change Nutrition is a vital factor in deaths caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in sub-Saharan Africa. This team of innovators wants to tackle this issue by improving nutrition knowledge through secondary school students and mothers using a gaming and storytelling platform, to promote behaviour change in healthy eating.

This project aims to break the intergenerational cycle of health inequities in low- and middle-income countries by developing an affordable toolkit to tackle child labour and promote health equity (technological/business innovation) implemented through training primary care outreach workers in low-resource settings (social innovation).

Development of a Community-Embedded Family Therapy Intervention in Kenya: A faith- and village-based approach Family conflict can be the root cause of mental health symptoms. Currently, many families seek counseling from religious and village leaders, people without previous training. This project aims to offer these community leaders evidence-based technology tools to provide improved family therapy, thus providing family therapy for children who live in high-conflict families.

Globally, millions of children are physically punished every day, increasing their risk for lifelong mental and physical problems. Physical punishment fosters aggression, generates feelings of rejection, disrupts the brain's stress response mechanism and compromises the neural systems needed for self-regulation. Addressing this epidemic requires a paradigm shift in parental thinking.

Ruth Stringer and a team at Health Care Without Harm in the U.S., and colleagues at the Health Care Foundation Nepal, will design and test a decision-making tool that compares the costs, benefits, and environmental impacts of centralized autoclaving, recycling, and/or disposing of various types of conventional and safety syringes. This tool will enable decision makers to choose the most economical and sustainable medical waste management strategy.

Mira Johri of the University of Montreal Hospital and colleagues from Pratham Education Foundation in India propose to develop effective methods for health education in low-literacy communities to enable less educated women and families to understand the purpose of vaccinating children and the benefits of timely and appropriate utilization of immunization services.

Shaun Ferris of Catholic Relief Services in the U.S. will build and test different ways of obtaining feedback from farmers who are using business-focused agricultural services, which his organization provides. This suite of services, including courses on business planning and production, is designed to improve farmer productivity and profitability using a system of web-based applications and mobile phone information delivery. To transfer the management of some of these services back to the local communities, they need feedback on their performance and value in the field.

Alice Cepeda from the University of Southern California in the U.S. will project short 3-D messages given by crack users on selected walls and buildings to illustrate the dangers of crack use on HIV risk, and to promote healthy behavior and testing in local communities. Mexico has seen a recent increase in crack cocaine consumption, which is associated with an increased risk of HIV. They will focus on a vulnerable community in Mexico City, and select message content and ideal sites and times to project the messages.

Nana Coleman of World Vision in the U.S. will teach positive parenting skills such as hugging, reading, and playing to parents in Armenia to promote healthy childhood development. They will exploit their existing network of health care providers and parent support groups to teach better parenting behavior, and integrate it with another program they have been running to improve child and maternal health. They will test whether this holistic strategy is more effective at changing parental behavior and improving childhood nutrition and development than the individual approaches.

Jennifer Downs of Weill Cornell Medical College in the U.S. will use the influence of the church to encourage more male circumcision in order to reduce HIV incidence in Tanzania. Male circumcision can inhibit HIV infection, but it is uncommon, particularly amongst non-Muslim communities in African nations due to negative religious and social perceptions. They will train male and female church leaders to educate their congregations on the medical, historical, religious, tribal, and social aspects of male circumcision, and explore ways that they can integrate these teachings into the church.