The "160 Characters" Partnership

Insight, impact, and innovation to enhance peer-to-peer mobile phone support interventions for adolescents living with HIV in South Africa.

This multi-partner collaboration aimed to create a new, interdisciplinary research framework for understanding the potential of mobile messaging for the treatment of mental health. The research aimed to crack the 60,000+ messages generated by Project Khuluma - a peer to peer social support program for adolescents living with HIV in South Africa. 

The 160 Characters Project aimed to develop an interdisciplinary arts, health and humanities methodology for understanding the attitudes of adolescents towards their own health via the analysis of text message data captured by a peer-topeer mobile phone psychosocial support group intervention; and, subsequently, to develop strategies, techniques and solutions to serve their needs. 

To do so, the voices of medical science, social science, literature, technology, implementation science and participants themselves came together to generate new insights into the mental health and wellbeing needs of adolescents living with HIV. 

The grant facilitated two cross-disciplinary workshops, one in London with 18 participants from the ‘six voices’ and a workshop in Pretoria with Project Khuluma mentors. The purpose of the two day workshop was to understand what they think works best, and why, and to hear their ideas about how we can make a better service in the future. • The workshop included 10 mentors and involved a range of activities, a craft workshop, presentations and an in-depth analysis of the text message data.

In August 2018, a major report was published outlining the project's findings, recommendations, and methodologies.

Main image credit: Photo by kote baeza