Boost was designed and developed in collaboration with more than 100 community health workers from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Boost provides easy, up-to-date, visual and interactive materials on HIV, sexual health and COVID-19 to support community health workers’ ongoing learning and equip them with fun, interactive tools that they can use and share with their clients and communities.

The WhatsApp chatbot service uses Machine Learning to answer questions, and returns optimised Boost content from the same system that powers the web app.

A large number of Boost’s target users have access to WhatsApp as it is the number one messaging app in southern Africa.

Machine Learning - The Bot learns over time by answering common questions about HIV and other related health questions and provides advice

BoostBot API - The Boost API provides a simple way for BoostBot to retrieve content and distribute it to different apps

Community health workers support millions of people with, or at risk of HIV in Southern Africa. They are often people’s first point of contact with the health system. To play an effective role, they need clear, accessible, and accurate information so they can provide high quality care to their communities.

Often community health workers rely on paper-based resources which are difficult to keep up-do-date, or in-person training which vary in terms of regularity and quality. There is also a lack of digital information resources specifically developed and tailored to the needs of community health workers and the Southern African context.

With access to mobile phones growing in Southern Africa, we saw an opportunity to address this need by providing a digital alternative: a more convenient way for community health workers to stay up-do-date and have the information they need to hand throughout the day.