An Educational Intervention In Rural Uganda: Risk-targeted Home Talks by Village Health Workers

Abstract Objective Evaluate the effectiveness of home talks (HTs), a novel health education model given by village health workers with a primary-level education to rural African mothers of families identified by biannual health census as being at risk for malnutrition, diarrhea, respiratory disease, HIV, and poverty due to family size. Methods Each participant received a pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test on their assigned HT topic and a pre-test and delayed post-test on a randomly assigned control topic. Differences in scoring were examined against controls and over time using paired t-tests and general linear regression analysis, respectively. Results Subjects lost some of what they had learned from the HTs over time, but what they retained at 3 months was far greater than what they learned about the control topics (p-values Conclusion Targeted HTs to people with health census-identified risk factors resulted in learning and significant retention of knowledge. Practice implications This model of rural health education by VHWs using personalized home talks focused on vulnerable families, is novel and effective, and may be used to improve community health in other impoverished settings worldwide.