Targeted Growth: Partnerships, Tech, and Content Expansion

Nurturing partnerships to Drive Change in Kenya

Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Nivi, Ben Bellows, spent part of January and February 2023 supporting partnerships and projects in Kenya—and there’s good news to report!

Onboarding new users to askNivi via QR codes in pharmacies throughout Kenya (an endeavor initially conducted in partnership with Ipas that we described in detail last month, here) is off to a strong start. QR code posters and business cards are now available in over 40 pharmacies, where customers can with the help of pharmacists, engage askNivi on their phones and gain immediate access to post-MA contraception education and resources. Pharmacists and community mobilizers throughout Nakuru and Naivasha are leveraging askNivi to address clients’ healthcare needs as well as recommend askNivi as a convenient digital health tool for a range of self-care and primary health needs.

In addition to projects underway, Ben met with potential partners to discuss Nivi’s value-add to private providers—an area in which askNivi is poised to boost providers’ patient base and scale their overall impact in Kenya. Businesses, healthcare facilities, organizations and individual providers can partner with Nivi to increase client traffic, garner client feedback, improve client retention and repeat visits, ensure longitudinal counseling support, and even highlight specific promotions and campaigns. We’ve learned from past experience that developing partnerships on the ground is an accelerator for growth and impact; and we hope to announce the fruits of that labor, and new partnerships, in the coming months!

The Drill-Down Experience: What is it, and why is it important?

Technological innovation is a cornerstone of both the evolution of Nivi as well as our day-to-day. This month, we’d like to highlight a tech feature that’s new to askNivi: the Drill-Down Experience!

The Drill-Down Experience, or DDE for short, is a method to highlight relevant health products and services offered on the platform. Depending on the previous chatbot content a user has engaged with—as well as their age, gender, and geographical location—users who express interest in a product or service receive one or more resources as recommendations (a user might decide to seek HIV testing after engaging with HIV educational content, for example, or a consultation for long-acting family planning after taking our Pregnancy Risk Myth-Busting Quiz). 

One fortunate challenge of Nivi’s continued growth left us in somewhat of a predicament: the more organizations that partner with Nivi, the more resources become available to anyone using Nivi! Many of these resources involve intimate choices or behavior changes that require serious contemplation on the part of the individual. Hence the creation of DDE—we felt that users deserve the opportunity to explore their referrals to a greater depth before redeeming any one in particular. So now in selected segments of askNivi content that generate recommendations users receive a referral with a deeper explanation of the resource itself.

When a referral comes with pertinent information (such as potential side effects when using the implant as a contraceptive method, or the benefits of a particular e-commerce site when shopping for condoms) users are more informed and more likely to redeem. While this is a positive outcome, it isn’t our only goal when launching new  digital features—we see askNivi as a conduit to accessible, equitable healthcare for all. So, with each additional partner using the platform, we strengthen our ability to help our users to be  empowered for important decisions about their healthcare; prioritizing well-being, one conversation at a time.

Family Planning Journey: Prioritizing Contraceptive Uptake in Africa

In 2022 Nivi redoubled efforts to prioritize demand-led voluntary contraceptive uptake, informed choice, and contraceptive continuation —creating and testing all manner of health information categories and engagement methodology to learn more about Nivi users, their contraceptive needs, and their health goals. 

That work has continued into 2023 and now we can announce that we are deploying our Family Planning Journey in Kenya and Nigeria!

As mentioned in our 2022 year-end highlights, Nivi has developed a tech feature that we call Journeys—a unique and forward-thinking way for askNivi to automate the assessment of any user’s knowledge and intentions, tailor health education delivery accordingly, provide targeted referrals in their geographical area, and encourage redemption and behavior change. It’s an exciting new way for Nivi to make its interventions even more effective and scalable.

Our first test of the Journeys feature was with family planning in India. We found that sequential family planning education on topics like menstruation, the benefits of contraception, and method types and uses delivered over time outperformed the family planning education that existed on the platform previously; women age 18-49 were less likely to go idle and more likely to receive a referral and more likely to redeem it. 

Since then, it’s been utilized to learn from and leverage user knowledge to increase HPV vaccinations and cervical cancer screenings in Kenya. Now, however, we’re aiming even higher: automating our family planning content to support increased voluntary contraceptive uptake and adherence.

To do so, we've begun internal evaluations similar to those conducted last year in India. They include A/B testing various categories of health education among different segments of users, as well as using engaging methods, like scored knowledge assessments, to draw and hold users’ interest. So far, we’re learning a lot—and we’re excited for what comes next. 

Sexual and reproductive health has been a mainstay of askNivi since Day One; and our recent forays into scaling up our programming in India, Kenya, and Nigeria are a testament to our commitment to interventions that increase our users’ health literacy, well-being, and health outcomes through ethical, accessible means. 

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