Francis et al. (2018) carried out a self-administered survey related to barriers using smartphones for health education among families with 273 English speaking parents. The research results showed some limitations of health education using the app. 42% of the respondents identified barriers to smartphone usage. Among those who identified one or more barriers (n=108), difficulties were primarily related to Wi-Fi access (46%), available phone memory (45%), existing phone data (28%), and discomfort with technology (11%). The majority of parents (59%) were interested in using smartphones to learn about their child’s health. According to the results, it showed a high potential that one can use smartphones and other smart devices to educate children despite discomfort with technology once the research team overcomes the challenge of lack of access to Wi-fi. This aspect was taken into account within our ICT project.
Alhassan et al. (2019) investigated the determinants of mobile health education for Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) with 250 young people aged 18 to 24 enrolled in Ghana University. The University conducted a survey about the usage of mobile phones to provide STIs education and prevention with sociodemographic data collection. According to their findings, a high proportion of the respondents (99.2%) possessed mobile phones and they have a high willingness and interest to use mobile phones (70%) for STIs education and prevention, especially using mobile applications (40.1%). Education using mobile phones also helped students overcome social stigmas of being able to discuss STIs in public and instead learn more closely about preventing STIs, thus increasing its effectiveness. Based on the findings, we could conclude that using the application to educate students about family health (including STIs) and sanitation would be sustainable and effective, considering that a high proportion of the respondents possessed mobile phones and had a high willingness to use the mobile applications for STI education and prevention. Although we will be focusing more on Southeast Asian countries, we believe that this research can also be applied directly to assessing the effectiveness of our proposed volunteer project and research.
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Although there has been debate about whether education using ICT technology is effective, the literature review displays that ICT technology played a significant role and was accepted as a useful tool to educate children. With increased access to education based on sanitation and family health, along with the necessary items that go along with the curriculum within the kit, the research team hopes for similar results as other similar studies presented previously. In other words, the team hopes for the increased physical health of the children along with deeper knowledge about family health and sanitation that would help prevent abortions or unwanted pregnancies through a wide acceptance and utilization of the ICT application and the sanitary kit. We also strive to make this sustainable and long-lasting by continually developing our curriculum and visiting the Southeast Asian countries ourselves to distribute the necessary resources just in case the students do not possess such necessities.
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** Note that valid results have not yet been measured, as the ICT Health Project and the Sanitary Kit has not yet been distributed in the Philippines due to a delay in the first scheduled trip caused by the Taal Volcano eruption. This will be updated as soon as possible after our first visit.
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