The pandemic has reached all corners of the globe, hitting the world’s most vulnerable populations hardest. India and Bangladesh were no exception. Fortunately, the team at Noora Health saw the crisis coming and took swift action.

In a matter of months, Noora Health, supported by an emergency grant from the Skoll Foundation and other partners, developed and delivered a wide range of COVID-19 products and services currently being used by governments, development sector organizations, healthcare professionals, and community leaders in India and Bangladesh. They began their COVID-19 response through a needs-finding study that spanned more than 6000 respondents across multiple states.

Given this research, they adapted to the need of the hour, leveraging their expertise in health behavior change to create a set of programs to drive better health outcomes at home. The result is a comprehensive platform of critical information, and skills-based, behavior change focused training that empowers front line workers, supports families, and strengthens health systems.

Noora Health provided their partners with high impact behavior change content that spans 14 regional languages and 15 topics, including social distancing, precautions for the elderly and new mothers, as well as topics to address stigma and misinformation. Despite the time pressures of the pandemic, their COVID-19 content was rigorously tested and refined to support behavior change where it mattered most: emphasizing and reiterating key messages (e.g. consistent mask-wearing), that were customized for context, culture, region, and language. In addition to their existing partnerships with state and municipal governments, MyGov (the Indian Government’s national platform for citizen participation in governance), and the Government of Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Health Services actively disseminates Noora Health’s materials.

To better enable the last mile distribution of key information, Noora Health created an online training platform and supported more than 4,500 frontline workers across the country with engaging training.

Read the full article about Noora Health by Ben Pyne at Skoll Foundation.