Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Summary box
Mobile phone use in low-income and middle-income countries has increased, and with that offered huge potential to provide timely support for overworked and under-resourced health systems.
Behaviour change theory, which guides many mHealth interventions, is typically rational, sequential and designed to motivate and maintain personal behaviour change, such that cultures underpinned by emphasis on family, collectivist values may not benefit optimally.
We propose drawing on social networks as resources to inspire collective action—and to offer clues on improving the reach, resonance and impact of health messages to support social and behavioural change.
The benefit of mHealth is the opportunity for scaling and sustainability, especially in low-resource settings—it is therefore important to consider how change occurs within and across social and cultural groups, and the role mobile devices can play in this process.
Mobile phone use in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) reflects one reward of globalisation: the unprecedented potential for real-time, targeted social connectivity via mobile devices.1 In the context of Universal Health Coverage, arguably a priority for many low-resourced regions, digital communications via text messaging (short messaging service; SMS) or social networking sites (SNS) offer an opportunity to improve reach of health information and services to diverse and remote populations.2 Recent discussion about the benefit of using mobile devices for health (mobile health; mHealth) for LMICs refers to challenges of scaling and sustainability.3 4 Yet some of the less commonly described issues relate to the assumptions around message content, the theoretical basis of the messages and delivery modes (SMS/ SNS), in other words understanding what messages and modes of delivery are salient to different population groups. We also question how mobile technologies may influence change at a societal level. In contexts where social networks are extensive but resources are scarce, SNS offer an accessible and socially …