InterConnection Laptops Bring Health Education to Liberian Families
InterConnection awarded Seattle Community Heath International Medical Projects for Sustainability with 3 laptops for their Enhanced Well Child Care Program (EWCC) which provides health education to teen parents both at clinic visits and at home visits from nurses and specially trained teen parent peer counselors.
Here, nurses use InterConnection computers to educate teen mothers about proper positioning for optimal breastfeeding at a clinic in Liberia.
The Enhanced Well Child Care Program (EWCC)
Health education is crucial for the health of a baby, and nearly 1/3 of teenage girls in Liberia become mothers before age 20 due to lack of access to effective family planning methods. Since food insecurity is common among teen families, infant malnutrition in common as well. The EWCC Program was developed to provide nutrition education and resources to at risk families.
Families participating in the EWCC Program receive the following free care:
- Well child clinic visits for 2 years with frequent visits in the first 6 months of life.
- Nutrition education.
- Acute illness visits as needed.
- Health education presentations and personal counseling.
- Preventative screening and treatments.
Laptops Enable Teen Parent Peer Counselors to Provide Health Education Awareness
Because there is no internet available in some of the communities the EWCC Program serves, families were not able to access online educational materials available at the Health Clinics; InterConnection laptops will allow Teen Parent Peer Counselors to download and present informational videos to families during at home visits.
Since 2015, teen community health workers (teen parent peer counselors) have been selected from parents enrolled in the program who have done an outstanding job of raising their own children and who have good communication skills. Once trained by EWCC nurses, they visit pregnant teens and teen parents in their communities regularly to help them make the home setting as safe as possible by ensuring general safety of the home environment and offering advice on any breastfeeding or infant feeding problems the families face. Helping their clients make plans to return to school, prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and obtain effective family planning methods are also core functions of the program.
During at home visits, EWCC staff takes advantage of group settings in the communities and provide spontaneous health education with not only teen mothers and fathers, but with grandparents and siblings who tend to gather around during visits. Additional training has been developed on topics such as: Ebola and Lassa fever, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, recognizing danger signs in child growth and development, and malnutrition.
Teen parent peer counselors receive compensation of $20-30 per month, a 12.5 kilo bag of rice per month, a first aid kit for home, and a cell phone card to use in reporting to EWCC staff and for maintaining contact with teens they have recruited. They are also given a certificate of completion for program training and a letter of recommendation when they leave the program.
Program Outcomes
The EWCC Program has seen breastfeeding rates increase from 49% to 77% and noted that re-enrollment in school after child-birth is up to 29% among program participants.
|
Outcome |
Infants/ teen mothers in EWCC Program | Infants/ mothers in general population |
| Infant malnutrition rate |
8% |
15% |
| Teen mothers using effective family planning methods |
38% |
13% |
| Exclusively breastfeeding for the first 6 months | 77% |
33% |
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