Chisom Milcah Obi-Jeff’s Updates
Nigeria Project Coordinator and Research Associate, Evaluating SMS messaging for immunization demand generation in Nigeria, January 2018-March 2020.
Currently, the Nigeria Project Coordinator and Research Associate for a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded project. This project seeks to establish and implement an Immunization Reminder & Information SMS System (IRISS), that would use SMS to inform and educate caregivers about the importance of immunization, and to remind them of their child’s immunization schedules. It is implemented in 14 Local Governemnt Areas of Kebbi State, Northern Nigeria.
Hello Choom Obi-Jeff, I am Dr. Aman Preet Kaur from India. I was the last presenter for the group discussion this week and you chose my presentation to suggest an activity. Thanks for suggesting the community approach , I'll try and Incorporate it while preparing my creator assignment!
Hello Ahmed, great to hear your interest about the project. Our project is a vaccine demand-generating intervention using a SMS-based messaging system called Immunization Reminder and Information SMS System (IRISS) that will deliver vaccination reminders and information to caregivers and populations at high risk of non-vaccination and incomplete vaccination via SMS, to improve vaccine uptake and timeliness, and reduce left out and dropout rates among Nigeria children.
This intervention will deliver immunization messages in three ways:
1. General: location-based broadcasts to the general public at the LGA level with general information about immunization and advertisements to opt-in to IRISS e-registry. We will use telecom service providers to achieve this.
2. Targeted: location-based broadcasts with information on the immunization clinic days for the nearest health center to individuals responding to general messages or advertisements (Leads) and to community gatekeepers (District Heads, Village Heads, Imams) to pass on to their community and congregation. We plan to use bulk SMS providers to achieve this considering the cost. If we use the SPs, it will cost use four times more per text.
3. Individualized: individualized messages to caregivers and other individuals who opt-in to receive messages on their child’s vaccination schedule. We also plan to use bulk SMS providers to achieve this considering the cost.
This is a randomized control trial and currently in the design phase (designing the IRISS application). Cost evaluation is also part of the study design and I will be happy to share the study findings with you when completed. For updates on the study progress, kindly visit our website www.dclnigeria.com
Dear Chisom this is a very nice experience of improving coverage of immunization and its good that you have directly involved in this.
I would like to ask you about this method,I know it can be sometimes costive and need negotiation with telecommunication companies to enable this message is passed to the target audiences, So I would like to ask if there has been researching how effective and efficient is this and also if there where attributable results that can be shared ?