As internet connectivity continues to expand, the sexual and gender-based violence women and girls face offline is being replicated online. When women enter an online environment, they face a disproportional risk of digital harassment, cyber stalking, doxxing, or the non-consensual distribution of images (i.e., “revenge porn”). Online violence has proven an especially powerful tool for undermining female (and female-identifying) human rights defenders and civil society leaders (especially those working on sensitive issues, such as sexual and reproductive health and human rights) worldwide, because the brutal response they face online also serves to endanger, discredit, shame, or defame them offline. Indeed, in a recent statement, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights emphasized this threat, saying “Online campaigns against women human rights defenders and organizations aim to damage their credibility as advocates, to diminish or obliterate the power of their voices, and to restrict the already limited public space in which women's activists can mobilize and make a difference.” From our perspective, the global health community has not fully understood the importance of digital safety and security training especially for women. We believe that without strong support to help them navigate these threats, women self-censor, remove themselves from online spaces, or retreat from leadership positions. This impedes the meaningful participation of women and girls from acting as agents of change to lead movements that will encourage longer term peace and stability, the net result of which is the diminished participation of women in civic space writ large. We can (and should!) empower these leaders to take their digital safety into their own hands, but they require careful, targeted support to do so. We will discuss our work on this topic, and suggest ideas for the global health community to engage more in this space.

The session will present the Digital Health Leadership Program of the African Alliance of digital health networks. The Digital Health Leadership Program is designed to help develop the technical capacity in African digital health leaders, particularly in government agencies, to develop, manage, and direc initiatives and investments. The specific objectives of the program are to: • Facilitate in-country personnel to receive certification training. • Establish a mentorship program that supports the graduates from the certification programs to apply the knowledge acquired in-country. • Establish a peer network that enables peer learning, support, and information exchange. • Provide technical assistance and on-the-job training (through the mentors). Expected outcomes of the program include: • Improvements in management of in-country digital health initiatives. • Increased confidence of the in-country digital health leaders in the program as they are supported by both mentors and peers. • Improvements in the execution of on-the-job activities and decisions of participants as learnings are applied. The program will achieve these objectives by supporting successful applicants to undertake and acquire world-class certifications in fields relevant to digital health (such as project management, governance etc.), providing mentorship and support to participants through a robust mentor faculty, peer-to-peer support through a community of practice, and immediate application of the learnings on the job. While didactic methods such as traditional classroom training are still necessary to convey theory and complex information, the repeated interactions with mentors and peers will reinforce t the training on the job enables “book knowledge” to become real-world experience and skill.

The presenter will guide the audience through a journey in the development of 3 distinct digital solutions in Mozambique: (1) development of two national digital platforms for human resource information systems and telehealth (Telessaude) in Mozambique; (2) The development of a platform that links numerous partners and interventions to assure a core package that reduced incidence of new HIV cases among adolescent girls and young women by 25%; and (3) The development of an application that supports lay-counselors in finding and following the capture of new HIV cases to ensure their linkage and retention in care and treatment. Key themes and good practices have helped the development of these complex systems with a team of core local staff with only minimal international support. This illustrates the importance of the untapped potential that exists locally, even in countries with limited resources that have problems with stable electricity, internet and reliable equipment. Despite these challenges, Mozambique has received international recognition for their progress and have hosted other country delegations in order to catalyze change. Through strong collaborations, thorough appreciation of local context and capacity, harnessing local expertise and undergoing an iterative and continuous development cycle, Mozambique continues to push the digital revolution to guide national programmatic decisions, support remote facilities and reduce needless expenses in the digital age. Jhpiego as a lead partner in supporting these developments offers its experience and knowledge to share how these successes occurred, what problems had to be overcome and how we continue to improve.

In developing countries, access to appropriate laboratory equipment is a major constraint to effective surveillance of infectious disease and antibiotic resistance. Even when equipment is available, it is often not appropriate to the local context – too easily broken, intolerant of the local electric grid, not locally serviceable, etc. But emerging tools and approaches in the design and implementation of hardware create the possibility of a new paradigm in diagnostic tools: open source lab equipment created for users in diverse contexts using human centered design. In this session, Rob Ryan-Silva from the DAI Maker Lab will explain how open source laboratory hardware can shift long-standing assumptions about who can do sophisticated laboratory work, and where. He will introduce some of the existing open source designs for equipment like PCR thermocyclers, gel electrophoresis devices, and even rudimentary diagnostic imaging systems. This talk is paired with an "Appy Hour" demonstration of some of these open source designs so that attendees can see and interact with some of these designs and discuss how they could be integrated into real-world programming.

We all know the power of mobile phones in reaching people in low-income contexts. But traditional mobile-based interventions have been used for just that - to reach people: either to push messaging at users, or extract data from them. They have been built around either basic SMS, WhatsApp or new apps which many in the communities we serve do not have the technographic access, the digital literacy or the data budget to be able to utilise effectively. We believe in the power of mobile for going beyond simply reaching people. We believe in the power of building engaging digital communities to enable people to change their own lives, using the basic mobile phones they have in their hands. Based on this, we have built U Afya - an online community for young mothers and mothers-to-be in low-income communities across Nairobi, which drives real-life behaviour change through digital engagement. The site takes a holistic approach to giving mothers the knowledge and confidence they need to enact certain healthy behaviours in relation to health, hygiene and family life. It’s a place to connect, give and receive advice, take free online courses, and to establish good habits with a custom-built habit tracking tool. And it’s all accessible via a basic internet enabled feature phone. This session will cover: HCD process we undertook with mothers to develop and run U Afya for and with them How we identified barriers, triggers and motivators to certain healthy behaviours, and created a comprehensive set of SBCC approaches and digital tools Rapid piloting and iterative content design using WhatsApp U Afya theory of change and integrated solution package Initial results in terms of reinforced knowledge, heightened confidence, increased affordability of health-influencing products, and a move towards establishing healthy behaviours as a habit