Using radio to share pediatric health prevention messages within indigenous communities in Bolivia (Year:2016)

A radio tower used to broad- cast educational health messages to the Tsimane’ territory

ICATCH Grant Cycle 2016-2019

In 2015 two cousins, Maya Masterson, MS, and Erin Masterson, PhD, MPH spent several months in the Bolivian Amazon collaborating with Dr. Tomas Huanca PhD (Director), Esther Conde (Co-Director) and their local team from the Centro Boliviano de Investigacion y Desarrollo Socio Integral (CBIDSI) to collect data for a research study focused on adolescent health. During visits in dugout canoes to 15 remote Tsimane’ villages, the team presented a brief health educational workshop to the communities, sharing the message in the native Tsimane’ language through the team translators using visuals drawn on large poster boards. Afterward, the community members, leaders and teachers, and the tribe’s governing body, the Gran Consejo Tsimane’ (GCT) enthusiastically requested continuation and expansion of these health messages.

With the support of ICATCH funding, this team developed, translated, recorded and broadcast three educational health messages, with a fourth currently in the works. Their chosen themes covered oral health, sanitation and hygiene, infectious illness, water care, and traditional and market foods. They recorded radio programs at the local station/studio in town. The recording was taken to the Tsimane’ radio program to be broadcast throughout the Tsimane’ Territory five times per week. They targeted peak listening times, during the weekend, for airings. The team also hand drew large poster books that CBIDSI uses as visuals for sharing these messages when their team is in the communities with visiting researchers. Finally, the team is working on producing DVDs that they will distribute to leaders and teachers in communities that have electricity.

Traveling to one of the Tsimane’ villages by canoe