MedAi SMART Health Champion Program: Community Engagement

However, this pioneering effort was not without its challenges. The demanding work patterns of RMG workers, who faced severe restrictions on leaving their workstations for more than five minutes, posed significant obstacles. Additional hurdles emerged from mid-level management resistance and the rigid factory opening schedules. Our primary (interview and focus groups) and secondary research revealed that many factories only have doctors on paper. The ones that employ doctors have them available for a very limited time each month, and workers have limited opportunities to address their ongoing health issues. Moreover, the available medical assistance is restricted solely to the workers, excluding their family members.

A strategic shift was made to engage RMG industry workers by tapping into their close-knit community networks, typically located in densely populated areas near their workplaces. These communities exhibit a strong mutual reliance on one another for social welfare, education, and healthcare.

We decided to harness this interconnected fabric of relationships and drive a community-driven digital health intervention initiative. This approach is anticipated to achieve rapid dissemination and higher efficacy through the network effect, as workers quickly learn and adopt new health solutions.

The MedAi team conducted several community engagement meetings with RMG factory workers in various locations in and around Dhaka. Through individual interviews and group discussions, we sought to understand their current healthcare challenges, evaluate how the medical facilities inside the factories fail to meet their health needs, assess their awareness of digital health, and gauge their technical capabilities.

These engagements aimed to devise an optimal strategy for delivering our SMART Health Champion program and identifying the right candidates. Through this meticulous process, we are committed to tailoring our initiative to effectively address the specific needs and capabilities of the RMG worker communities, ensuring a targeted and impactful implementation.

The SMART Health Training Program was conceived to train SMART Health Champions from these communities, who would facilitate virtual medical consultations. This approach involves training female RMG factory workers to become community health champions, leveraging a digital health app to book doctor's appointments for both their families and community members. The MedAi team will provide comprehensive training on measuring patients' vitals—such as temperature, pulse, breathing, blood pressure, blood sugar—and on collecting symptoms for remote virtual consultations.