For your Health Educators
Strategy and Module and Implementation of Training: Develop the capacities of AHEs national field cadres to induce positive health seeking behaviors in the community
Insight
We used Design Thinking fundamentals to understand the various perspectives of stakeholders and devise solutions that would have higher adoption and greater community impact.
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Develop a deep understanding of our audience for capacity building - the area health educators - their context, background, challenges, intent, motives
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Use the traditional method of in person capacity building - using group discussions, role plays, and unique facilitation techniques
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Develop a deep understanding of their audience for behaviour change - the communities
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Use the socio-ecological model of behaviour change to build a powerful link between the Health Educators and Communities:
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Change behaviours of our audience - build knowledge, influence motive and create ownership
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Transfer our deep understanding of their audience - to effect health seeking behaviours
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Context
Novartis’ social business called Arogya Parivar was established with the vision to create health seeking behaviour among rural communities. AHEs or Area Health Educators, made up the ‘community education’ unit. The Health Educator’s knowledge, motive and ownership played a significant role in creating health seeking behaviours in the communities they would interact with.
Challenge
To develop a behaviour change strategy and capacity building model that will build knowledge, influence motive and create ownership among the health educators, so that they could affect the change of creating health seeking behaviours in communities.
Results
Solution
In order to have the desired impact, we needed to build ‘social storytelling’ skills and capacities of the AHE team, nationally. Having understood the situation, barriers & enablers, the key subsequent steps in the solution were:
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Training Needs Analysis: We conducted an in depth TNA to understand the audience, need for training, gaps in knowledge & skills in terms of ‘social storytelling'.
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We created rich and extensive training modules focussing on different health areas keeping the TNA in mind. These modules were at two levels: Training of Master Trainers & Modules for Master trainers to further train field teams.
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Key materials were: ToT Modules, Participant Handbook, ToT guide, Presentation aids, supporting reading material
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We then conducted a Master ToT (Training of Trainers) for 8 states over multiple sessions consisting of Theory, Role-plays and Activities for experiential learning and application of concepts
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Developed pre and post evaluation tools to assess training outcomes
We also supplemented this with a Secondary training or Shadow training support i.e. handholding Master Trainers in key geographies for last mile training.
Management Outlook
As an outcome of the Design Thinking led discussions, and to the credit of the management, the outlook of the Program Leadership evolved. There was an increased community-centricity as well as sensitivity to the challenges faced by AHEs.
Confidence in AHEs
There was a marked shift in their confidence levels as they were able to communicate in a more compelling manner, bringing about shifts in both community outlook and behaviors
There was a significant improvement in the performance of each state unit & the business overall. Quantitatively, the business achieved their targets. Qualitatively, there was a significant increase in the community equity and health seeking behavior that the field teams were able to induce.
Performance Improvement
