DIGITAL HEALTH AND EDUCATION NETWORK – Kenya (DHEN-K)

HPFSS member and founder of the Digital Health and Education Network Kenya – Calvin Odera shares the work they are doing in Kenya.

According to the WHO 2017 Mental health report, its estimated that 1 in every 10 Kenyans suffer from a mental heath condition. This ranks Kenya as the 6th highest African country facing mental health issues.

Morever, people treat mental illness as a spiritual issue rather than a medical condition, also leading to many victims going untreated. As digital wellness takes center stage in many global fora with research and awareness campaigns focusing on infants, children and youth mental and social health, counties in the global south are yet to be fully involved in this noble discourse to discern the impact and interventions.

 Nonetheless, we experience the painful and dehumanizing effects of high tech consumption of gaming, gambling, pornography and screen dependency just like the rest of the world does. With little to no knowledge of the addictive design technology,many families struggle as family meal times are replaced by high screen activities scrolls,clicks and shares that takes away valuable moments while sleep and other essential human activities are reduced.They jealousy compete with screens.

Children missing their parent’s faces,touch and voices.While relationships are relegated to online search,video share and TIKTOK challenges.

Screens slowly eating to public and private affairs for more time is spent on the screen much more than we spend in building meaningful human connections and our families.This further escalates to learning institutions(schools),social and religious places(churches) with no spaces spared for children to play,learn and thrive with little or no screen interference.

CASE FOR DIGITAL ADDICTION AND SCREEN REDUCTION INTERVENTION

The advent of technology and internet penetration in Kenya, that is estimated to be 85%, means more and more people are using the internet, leading to more social detachment and reduced human interaction. Research from around the world shows the correlation between increased Internet use and a large increase in depression and anxiety which are the major mental health issues in Kenya.

With this expansive growth of the internet and digital consumption,with little or no concern about the mental wellbeing of the users and the internet’s effect on psychosocial wellbeing, would be a great cause of alarm.

As noted above, with 85% internet penetration and 69.7% of youths and children being more digitally literate than parents and teachers, what danger does this pose to the society and how prepared is Africa and Kenya, infrustracturally and professionally, to handle the effects of this steady influx of a  digital new age?

ITCHY TECH QUESTIONS

Big tech companies benefit from this huge consumption. They are operating within our space, but how are they contributing to curb addiction and increase the mental wellbeing of the children and the youths, who, out of curiosity, innocently become major victims of abuse and addiction?

How are policies and regulations structured to address digital Addiction and dependency and to reduce harms to the users?

As online safety focuses on curbing digital crime, digital health means addressing the social, mental, and physical health of the users.

Much as we as a country have laws and legal frameworks that care for and protect children and youths, on online safety, none of them pay close attention to the harms of this high-tech dependancy that have negative repercussions on the psychosocial development of the child and the youths.

This then becomes a gap in both mental health programs and digital literacy curriculum both at institutional levels and legislative levels.

To this effect it is prudent for a call to action to all the sector actors to adopt digital wellness policies. What is needed is research and studies for policy proposals and adoptions within various learning and teaching institutions in the country.

DIGITAL HEALTH EDUCATION NETWORK-KENYA

Our Vision: to engage, inform and bring together parents and other stakeholders around how screen consumption impacts children’s development in order to nurture and protect our children’s agency, creativity, authenticity, physical and mental health to promote a humane social connection.

What have we achieved

Establishing a working team of 7 volunteers.

The Seven forms the basic leadership structure that foresees the program implementation in schools, churches, health centers, community gatherings and stakeholders meeting.

Partnerships

Community Health Promoters (CHP)

This is the basic health unit in the country. Each CHP is in charge of 100 households.

After learning about what we do, they have embraced digital health as a concern as they daily interact with the community.

Our target is to train 1000 health practitioners before the end of the year to foster the campaign against digital addiction.

Through our network, we have successfully partnered with 4 other grassroots organizations.

All these work to ensure community betterment with independent offices and leadership structures.

Future Plan

*Establishing a Digital Health and Education Center to train and empower young generation as digital wellness ambassadors.

*Build a community of 30,000 empowered individuals impacted and transformed by our work, including the youth, children and parents.

*Lobby and petition the government to adapt a digital wellbeing policy.

Challenges

Our greatest challenge is community reach. As most of our activities would be offline, we need a strong community presence.

This has not been easy to attain as our volunteers strain to meet their daily needs i.e paying house rent, transport and other basic needs as they navigate the community to implement the program.

Accessing communities enables us to meet the people and get to listen to their lived experience.

It also enables us to reduce the excessive access of screens as we engage the society in reducing their screen time and improving their quality of life.

Our Greatest Strength

Within a span of 1 year and a half we have evolved to be the drivers of digital wellness in Kenya championing for a humane, safe and healthy environments for children to play, learn and thrive.

Let’s do this!