What were our discoveries?
Research in all the fieldsites other than al-Quds took place between February 2018 and June 2019. The ASSA team returned from the field before COVID-19 hit, though the researchers kept in touch with people from their fieldsites during the pandemic. So what did we find?
Click on the different findings below to be read about them in more depth. Where possible, we have tried to illustrate them through videos, photos and cartoon-style illustrations.
Applying our findings for health
As well as contributing to education, the ASSA project was committed to developing projects to more directly support health and wellbeing. This was based on the previous discoveries that suggested we can learn from the way people creatively use their smartphones for health, as opposed to traditional top-down mHealth approaches.
Examples of these include Charlotte Hawkins, who worked with Ugandan doctors to secure funding for a telepsychiatry project in Kampala.
Alfonso Otaegui developed a project to support ‘navigator nurses’ – the nurses that liaise between doctors and patients, in an oncology clinic in Santiago. He is also working to facilitate teaching smartphone use to older people in Chile.
Laura Haapio-Kirk piloted a LINE group to discuss food and diet for older people, while Marília Duque worked on a WhatsApp-based diet monitoring protocol.
Other interventions that are ongoing, but were disrupted by Covid-19, include the development of social prescribing websites in the Ireland fieldsites. These will promote activities for the retired people in the area. In al-Quds (east Jerusalem), there are several initiatives assisting the local Palestinian population in accessing health sites.
Watch over 80 short films from our different fieldsites, as well as films about the project, methodology, and films that summarise some of ASSA’s findings. You can watch all the videos on our Youtube channel by clicking here.
