Akinyi Odera who is the Senior Strategic Designer at the ThinkPlace Kenya (Nairobi) will share her experience of leading the Behavioural Design for Maternal Health Care project. The project aim was to develop an understanding of the barriers which hampered the uptake of maternal health services among women in rural and peri-urban communities in across four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa – Malawi, Ethiopia Mali, and Kenya.
The project developed a set of six tools that enabled research assistants to go beyond reported data and enable agencies to unpack participants’ attitudes, norms, and customs at a broader levels to identify the system-wide barriers preventing the uptake of healthcare services. When designing these tools the designers considered how they may incorporate multiple stimuli presentation methods such as the use of visuals, videos, and verbal engagement through debate-like prompts.
The Behavioural Design for Maternal Health Care project was a winning entry for the 2022 Core77 Design Awards in the Strategy & Research Award category. You can read more about the project on this link https://designawards.core77.com/Strategy-Research/113456/Generating-Behavioral-Insights-Using-Rapid-Research-Approaches
Akinyi is a Senior Designer in ThinkPlace’s engagement with the humanitarian and development sector. With over 5 years at ThinkPlace, Akinyi has led numerous global development projects working directly with multilateral organizations, INGOs, and the private sector across a variety of low-resource contexts.
She holds a total of 10 years of experience in Strategic Communication and three years of experience in Social and Behavior change. Over the last four years, Akinyi has actively worked in the human-centered design field, leading the delivery of immersive research and prototyping activities, and producing solutions to complex problems in sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene, and climate change.
Akinyi has been one of ThinkPlace’s key thought leaders in the application of social psychology and anthropological theory to our global social and Behavior change (SBC) work. In the recent past, she led the delivery of an extensive behavioral research exercise in Malawi and Kenya focused on uncovering the cognitive factors that influence the uptake of antenatal care (ANC). She designed a portfolio of innovative, participatory research tools anchored on multiple stimuli methods. This project won the 2022 Core 77 Design Awards under the Research Strategy category. Additionally, she has participated in large-scale projects in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, aimed at understanding the influences of hygiene practices such as latrine usage, and face and hand washing. Further, Akinyi is currently working with the World Food Programme in Ethiopia to build a Social and Behaviour Change Communication Strategy aimed at increasing the consumption of nutrient-dense foods.
Akinyi has recently worked with UNICEF to prepare a training module that will build the capacity of UNICEF and UNFPA Programme managers to identify social, design responsive Programes, and measure social norm change.
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