While progress is being made to develop the public health system in Cambodia, health center services are rudimentary and coverage remains uneven. Many rural communities are seriously under-served or lack services entirely. Limited government capabilites impedes communicating basic health messages to rural people, especially those in isolated communities. To open an additonal channel of health education that reaches rural women (the majority of whom are illiterate), the Reproductive and Child Health Alliance (RACHA) and the MoH turned to the Buddhist religious system. Buddhism remains the cornerstone of rural social organization and constitutes an important resource for health promotion activities. With training and support, monks, nuns, achars, and doun yeay are trained to communicate basic messages about correct breastfeeding, proper home care for children with diarrhea and ORS use, and use of home birth kits. Birth spacing motivation will be added. Through repeated house-to-house visits in their home villages, these religious leaders effectively disseminate health messages to rural women. In less than one year, nearly every household in health center catchments where some 50,000 people reside has been visited one or more times to deliver these messages. All of this has been done on a purely voluntary basis. Survey data show that the women remember the messages correctly and qualitative information suggests some are changing behaviors. While this program was initially conceived as a way to augment the government system, results suggest that these religious leaders are often more convincing sources of health information to rural women than trained health staff.
Learning Objectives: At the completion of the session, the participant will be able to: 1. recognize that even in the poorest countries, social networks exist that can be employed to create new channels for health communication and promotion at very low cost; 2. have a clear example of how communication by trusted local religious leaders greatly increases the credibility of health messages to villagers.
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.