Mobile as AT: exploring community health literacy

Health literacy is critical in managing personal and community health and has a central role to play in primary health care strategies. People with disabilities commonly face barriers to accessing health services and to building health literacy, particularly in low-resource settings, where a limited availability of health services intensifies these challenges.

In this webinar we will share insights from a pilot project conducted with people with disabilities, their carers, and assistive technology (AT) users living in informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone that used mobile phones and digital technology to support residents in accessing health information.

We’ll hear from research teams, to understand how the high level of uptake and engagement with this pilot intervention suggests that digital technologies, if used in accordance with participant priorities and capabilities, can be leveraged to support health information dissemination efforts and build health literacy among low income urban residents.

The community health literacy research was conducted by Bartlett Development Planning Unit of University College London (DPU), the SHM Foundation, the Federation of Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP), and the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) - as part of UK aid funded AT2030, an international programme led by Global Disability Innovation Hub, to improve access to life-changing AssistiveTechnology (AT) for all.

During the webinar we’ll look at how and why the use of digital technologies accessible from basic smart-phones is a promising avenue for primary health strategies in contexts such as Sierra Leone. We’ll also explore the wider context of mobile as AT, and how the GDI Hub’s AT2030 programme has been working globally to build foundational knowledge and research in this space.