engageSPARK for Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHU or JHSPH) focuses on protecting the world’s population from diseases and injuries. Its diverse medical professionals, researchers, scientists, and educators “work with communities and populations [to] identify the causes of disease and disability and implement largescale solutions.”

In October 2017, JHU reached out to engageSPARK to explore the possibility of collaborating on public health research in Colombia using SMS text message surveys and Voice IVR (interactive voice response[1]) surveys. engageSPARK is a social enterprise that offers a browser-based, cloud-hosted platform used by non-techies at NGOs and businesses to launch interactive Voice IVR and SMS text message campaigns globally.

The project, The Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative, is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Government of Australia. It is divided into two components:

• improving civil registration and vital statistics.

• improving data use.

To achieve some of the project’s goals, JHU employed the use of mobile phone surveys for real-time data gathering. The surveys are divided into three experiments:

• Experiment 1 is to identify the appropriate incentive amount to motivate participants to complete an IVR survey.

• Experiment 2 is to identify the appropriate incentive amount to motivate participants to complete an SMS text message survey.

• Experiment 3 is to determine appropriate methods for participants to consent to IVR surveys:

The incentives were in the form of airtime top-ups (prepaid mobile phone credit). Each IVR survey and SMS survey began by offering participants a specific amount of airtime to complete the survey, with different participants offered different incentive amounts.

This case study focuses mainly on Experiment 1 of JHU’s public health survey for non-communicable disease risk factors.