The Role of Community Radio in Creating Awareness on Health Issues: A Case Study of Pamoja Fm’s Linda Mama Delivery Programme

Abstract

Community radio has globally been used to create awareness on a range of topical issues, including political awareness, education, crime, safety, human rights, and health communication. Accordingly, against the backdrop of low uptake in slum communities largely attributed to its low awareness levels coupled with paucity of literature, this study set out to assess the role of community radio in creating awareness on health issues with reference to Pamoja FM particularly concerning Linda Mama Delivery program. More specifically, the study set out to establish the level of awareness of community members of the Linda Mama programme in the Kibera sub-county; to examine how Linda Mama awareness campaigns are carried out by community radio in the Kibera sub-county; to evaluate community members’ perception of the Linda Mama programmemessages as communicated by community radio in Kibera sub-county, and to determine the extent to which awareness creation of Linda Mama programme by community radio has influenced its uptake in Kibera sub-county. Anchored on the health belief model, this study took the descriptive design, employing a mix of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The target population was all 56,406 resident women in Kibera sub-county. Using the Yamane (1967) formula, the determined sample size was 100 resident mothers, who were selected by convenience sampling technique and equally distributed across the 20 registered health centers in Kibera slums located within the 5 wards in Kibera Sub-County, namely Sarang'ombe, Woodley, Makina, Laini Saba and Lindi Kamitha. A semi-structured questionnaire was used. Techniques for both qualitative and quantitative data analysis were utilized. This was employed in a complementary manner, whereby descriptive computations including frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations were utilized to evaluate quantitative data, while qualitative data was used to complement and expound on the quantitative findings through thematic content analysis. Results indicate that a majority of the residents of Kibera sub-county are highly aware of the various aspects of the Linda Mama programme(ẋ=4.000; SD=0.915). The study found that the community radio in Kibera sub-county carries out Linda Mama awareness campaigns through a number of practices and avenues (ẋ=4.182; SD=0.829). It was further found that generally, a majority of Kibera sub-county residents (ẋ=4.126; SD=0.769) have a positive perception towards messages on the Linda Mama programme as communicated by community radio. The study also found that to a great extent (ẋ=4.022; SD=0.858), awareness creation of the Linda Mama programme by community radio has influenced its uptake in Kibera sub-county. It is concluded that the awareness campaign practices used by Pamoja FM; and the positive perception towards messages on the Linda Mama programme as communicated by community radio have been effective in creating awareness on the Linda Mama programmeamong residents of Kibera sub-county, leading to its uptake. It is therefore recommended that community radio ownership and management in the country invest in awareness campaigns using such practices and avenues as the use of open-air show, adverts, daily programs, expert interviews, news bulletin and debate to effectively create awareness on various health issues. It is also recommended that community radios in particular and media houses need to adopt messages that are simple, interesting, understandable, informative and educative to achieve their awareness campaign objectives.