Can You Make an Impact on HIV Testing in West Africa in Just Three Weeks?

With a national HIV prevalence rate estimated at 4.7%, Côte d’Ivoire is the most affected country in West Africa where the HIV/AIDS pandemic has risen since 1985, when the first cases were discovered. The impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is such that it represents the first cause of death for men and the second for women.

This team, coordinated by ThinkPlace, conducted three sprints of rapid iteration, prototyping and testing. Users, community members, NGO members/facilitators, and Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs staff participated in these workshops and prototyped alongside ThinkPlace. Drawing on the principles of co-design, these workshops repositioned participants of the Brothers for Life program from being ‘targets’ of public health interventions to being stakeholders whose opinions, behaviors, and experiences matter most.

From the first round of workshops, four concepts emerged and were turned into prototypes. One of the challenges of the program was to recruit older men (35+), whose HIV rate is superior to all age groups (7.4% compared to national average of 3.2%). Over the course of three weeks, twelve prototypes were developed, deployed and tested, often with a few iterations per prototype.

In order to understand if the prototypes were effective, ThinkPlace measured the prototypes against 2-5 variables. The intention was to understand, through these indicators, how awareness and sensitization can translate to action and, ultimately, to behavior change.

ThinkPlace managed to recruit over 500 men in 3 weeks, demonstrating that prototyping fast to show whether an idea can achieve a goal is a very successful approach. New Brothers for Life groups have been formed and as a result of our intervention, more men can be tested for HIV and treated.

Source: ThinkPlace

Date of Publication: June 29, 2021