Abstract
A 35-month cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted in Burkina Faso to test whether a radio campaign focused on child health, broadcast between March 2012 and January 2015, could reduce under-5 mortality. This paper describes the design and implementation of the mass media intervention in detail, including the Saturation+ principles that underpinned the approach, the creative process, the lessons learned, and recommendations for implementing this intervention at scale. The Saturation+ approach focuses on the 3 core principles of saturation (ensuring high exposure to campaign messages), science (basing campaign design on data and modeling), and stories (focusing the dramatic climax on the target behavior) to maximize the impact of behavior change campaigns. In Burkina Faso, creative partnerships with local radio stations helped us obtain free airtime in exchange for training and investing in alternative energy supplies to solve frequent energy problems faced by the stations. The campaign used both short spots and longer drama formats, but we consider the short spots as a higher priority to retain during scale-up, as they are more cost-effective than longer formats and have the potential to ensure higher exposure of the population to the messages. The implementation research synthesized in this paper is designed to enable the effective adoption and integration of evidence-based behavior change communication interventions into health care policy and practice.
Highlights
Global Health: Science and Practice 2015 | Volume 3 | Number 4 controls
For our campaign in Burkina Faso, where our primary aim was to reduce child mortality, we developed a message calendar based on the predicted impact of each behavioral message on under-5 lives saved
We have found in Burkina Faso that solving the frequent energy problems that affect community radio stations—frequent power cuts, broken generators, and rising costs of energy supplies—by installing solar power is a more powerful incentive to ensure that stations remain committed to a campaign
Summary
Global Health: Science and Practice 2015 | Volume 3 | Number 4 controls. The RCT tested the impact of a mass media campaign alone; there was no supply-side intervention. This was crucial in ensuring that we were made aware of staff changes and power or equipment problems as soon as they occurred, preempting the danger of a station going off air We consider short Another tool to motivate media partners is spots as the most providing them with impact data specific to their important format audience. In Burkina Faso, for example, national coverage can be achieved by increasing our number of community radio station partners from 7 in the RCT to 29, taking the number of languages required from 6 to 12 Given this level of linguistic complexity, it is highly unlikely that qualitative research and pretesting of spots can be carried out in all languages. Multiple channels and multiple formats will always be preferable in order to achieve saturation and impact, but when faced with limited resources, we suggest that spots be prioritized
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