SRH trends in Kenya users engagement during COVID-19
By: Diana Klatt
Tags: Sexual Health, Global Health, Mhealth, Public Health, Reproductive Health

Around the world, COVID-19 has changed the way that we live. Social distancing, lockdowns, masks, and other infection control efforts have been successful in many places, helping to decrease transmission and death while also creating new challenges in the ways we interact with the healthcare system. Worldwide, people have faced multilayered challenges in accessing information, products, and health services, and it shows in how they interact on social media and on messaging services, like Nivi.

In Kenya, the COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions began mid-March, and Nivi launched COVID-19 content by the end of the month (more on our initial response to COVID-19 here). Almost immediately, we saw changes in the way that users interacted with askNivi with shifts in what users were most interested in as well as a slight shift in user demographics. From January 1st to August 1st, Nivi’s users aged 25–34 years old more than doubled (from 17% to 30%), suggesting that older users were turning toward digital outlets to find information and resources for their reproductive health.

Conversations on FP Method Uptake and Reproductive Health Safety

We also noticed significant shifts in the conversations engaged over time. Initially, users were most interested in how COVID-19 would impact their lives and how to maintain levels of intimacy and personal health during the imposed restrictions. By the second quarter of the pandemic (July — September), the most popular conversations shifted to family planning screening (65%), followed by STIs, HIV, and HPV (21%) and intimacy (9%), suggesting that after months of restrictions, more users wanted to safely resume intimacy with their partners.

Improving access to HPV information & cervical cancer screening

We started our COVID response aiming to deliver practical SRH information to users. After seeing the heightened interest in STIs, including HIV and HPV, we worked to strengthen our HPV content and cervical cancer referrals. Since August, we have expanded user engagement with HPV and cervical cancer content, supporting over 3,000 users’ conversations, guiding 300 users through screenings, and referred more than 50 users to cervical screening services. With successful initial numbers, we continue to scale, in partnership with Pathfinder Kenya, Grand Challenges Canada, and other key stakeholders, to provide users with reliable information, give suggestions and recommendations as applicable, and refer users to clinics and practitioners. We expect to see more interest in using digital services to fill informational gaps, meeting users’ reproductive health and family planning needs. We will continue to smooth users’ self-care health journeys, working with our partners, and growing our referral network to facilities, services, and resources throughout Kenya.

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