Media4health group will be sent to Botswana to put media project in motion.
A few students are using media savviness to illustrate realities.
The African Media4health, a four-member group, will present its award-winning project about non-communicable diseases titled "Roll Back NCD” in the Multicultural Center on Thursday.
The project was created for Ohio University’s 2nd Annual Global Health Case Competition. During the process, teams present projects based on a themed 21st century global health issue.
For this year’s competition, 50 OU students submitted proposals to shine light on the theme of non-communicable diseases (NCD) in Botswana, Africa. The group used different types of media to show what those problems are and how people in Botswana can avoid them. Those diseases accounted for about 37 percent of Botswanan deaths in 2014.
Keith Phetlhe, group member and second-year graduate student, said the secretary general of the United Nations in Botswana claims non-communicable diseases are a health emergency.
“He acknowledged that this threatens the existence of good health in many countries as a whole,” Phetlhe said. “Developing countries tend to be impacted a lot more due to scarcity of resources that improve certain lifestyles.”
Non-communicable diseases are non transmittable and caused by unhealthy lifestyles. The group thought more information on that needed to be researched and explained. Examples include diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure and heart disease.
The group’s work will not end Thursday. They travel to Botswana in June to attempt to implement the ideas from “Roll Back NCD.”
Kingsley Antwi-Boasiako, a third-year Ph. D student and member of Media4health, said drinking, smoking and eating unhealthy food puts people at risk to receive these diseases.
“If you drink too much or eat poorly this clogs your arteries, causes high blood pressure and hypertension,” Antwi-Boasiako said. “These are usually some of the main determinants.”
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Phetlhe said those statistics have hit home for him.
“I have lost friends, colleagues and close family members due to non-communicable diseases,” Phetlhe said “Some of them were diagnosed at a very late state, making them at risk to losing their lives.”
In 2014, the global competition theme focused on vector borne diseases that are spread through mosquitoes in Guyana, South America.
Maria Modayil, a graduate assistant for Global Health Initiative, said the College of Health Sciences partnership with global partners determines the themes of global health competitions.
“It’s a partnership between us and the country that we are working with,” Modayil said. “It depends on what we collaborate and what the key issues are that they want us to focus on.”
The Media4health group consists of OU students from majors such as film, media arts and studies, African studies and communication and development studies.
“There are different perspectives and ideas coming together to make this interdisciplinary solution,” Modayil said “With a mix of different disciplines, you always get students thinking outside the box and having different viewpoints, which leads to interesting solutions.”
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Antwi-Boasiako gave the Media School and global health competition organizers praise for giving multicultural students the confidence and tools to share these projects locally and abroad.
“We are happy that as African students that we are able to partake in this competition and come up with a proposal that’s going to help check cases of NCD,” he said. We are hoping that we will be able to reduce them through education and radio.”
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