Smart Client and Smart Couple: Digital Health Tools to Empower Women and Couples for Family Planning
To prepare women and men for more effective FP decision-making communication before, during and after a counseling visit, under its global activities, the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3), a project under the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) developed two “smart client” tools – one prioritizing women, and one prioritizing couples. The tools are mobile-phone, SMS- and interactive voice technology (IVR)- based and are designed to provide information and introduce practical skills to help women and their partners be informed, empowered and confident clients.
Both tools were pretested in Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire, and larger user studies were conducted with both tools in Kaduna, Nigeria to evaluate the effects of the tools. Participants in the user studies had very positive feedback about the content and their experience using the tools. Furthermore, both tools had a significant positive impact on users’ beliefs and intentions related to family planning.
The Smart Client and Smart Couple tools have been developed with the intention that they can be adopted and adapted by other FP projects seeking another channel for reaching their target audience.
The following tools and reports are available:
- Part 1: Background and Description
- Part 2: Smart Client Scripts: Characters, Scripts, and SMS
- Part 3: Smart Couple Scripts: Characters, Scripts, and SMS
- Part 4: Adaptation Guide
- Smart Client User Study Report 1
- Smart Couple User Study Report 2
Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs
Date of Publication: October 13, 2020