Meet Ogweno, health champion innovating ways to tame lifestyle diseases

The medical world is fast evolving with a dire need to ensure medically-correct information reaches the masses at the right time.

It is in this regard that Stephen Ogweno, the founder and CEO of Stowelink Foundation—a youth led organisation that primarily focuses on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) education literacy and advocacy— has crafted an innovative way to do so.

Non-communicable diseases are diseases that do not transfer from one person to another and are often called lifestyle diseases including cancers, diabetes, heart diseases among others.

In Kenya these diseases account for three out of every five deaths and over 55 per cent of hospital admissions making it a major health burden in the country.

In the previous administration, the Big 4 agenda on health focused on reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases as part of its universal health coverage initiative.

Even in the current administration, non-communicable diseases continue to be a focus in the health sector with the launch of the NCD national strategy 2022-2026.

Ogweno however feels like despite non-communicable diseases posing a great burden in the country, they are rarely funded and receive less than three per cent of the total budget.

A trained global health advocate who has worked extensively locally and globally in the health space, Ogweno through his startup Stowelink Foundation sought to address the burden of NCDs.

“In 2020 when Covid-19 struck and there was no way to do in person trainings, I started to look for other innovative ways to continue the mission of educating communities on NCDs. One of the ways that quickly came to mind was to develop an online course to inform and educate," he said.

With this new idea in mind, Ogweno pulled together his experience working with the World Health Organization NCD labs, and all the knowledge and expertise acquired from his education at Kenyatta University, University Of Manchester, and Cambridge University to develop a simplified, evidence based curriculum on NCDs for public health.

Through a collaboration with his professor at the University of Manchester, they developed the NCDs training module for schools and communities and went even further on to develop a full online course called the non-communicable diseases for public health.

“The course contains everything one would need to learn about these diseases, how to prevent them, and their relations to other areas in health plus its delivered in a simple yet easy to understand language and format," Ogweno said.

However, even with the course curriculum developed, the biggest challenge lay in the recording and production of the same.

“It was even tougher as I had no funds nor experience developing online courses or anything related to it and so I almost hit a barrier there yet I really wanted this out there," he says.

However, through his networks, he met Paul Mukoma,the CEO of Talanta Institute and a veteran in the Kenyan film, media and entertainment industry.

Mukoma has produced multiple award winning songs, television series and educational content.

Together, he says, the two were able to produce a world class online course programme right here in Kenya and which has since been uploaded on Udemy, a global online learning platform.

Despite prior expectations that the produced online course would be a paid one, Ogweno felt that direction would serve to limit his actual objective which is to ensure as many people as possible are informed about NCDs.

He instead set himself an ambitious goal to sponsor 1,000 individuals to undertake the course in 24 months.

These included students, health professionals and health enthusiasts.

“The reason the course was developed in the first place was to train more people on non-communicable diseases to increase awareness on the topic and to reduce the cases of these diseases,” he said.

He narrates that when the course went live, and the sponsorship was rolled out, something amazing happened as the course received resounding positive feedback from all who undertook it.

“The students lauded the simple straight forward presentation of the course, the fact that the course covered the whole spectrum and the exceptional delivery and production of the course.

He said that in just 13 months, the course reached more than 1,000 students and was shared in more than 88 countries with Kenya leading with more than half of the students taking the course.

The course rating stands at 4.42 and has been taught and translated to 19 languages across the world with over 14,000 hours taught.

As to why the course is free, Ogweno believes that in order to create impact, there is need to drive change and educate people and empower them with information on non-communicable diseases.

For years, Ogweno has taken the NCD journey personally as he was born with childhood obesity and went on to suffer from other non-communicable diseases over his lifetime.

At just 26 years, Ogweno reveals that he has since lost five close relatives and friends to these diseases, something he says has toughened his resolve to fight NCDs even more.

This course is just one of the many ways he continues to develop toolkits and innovation to enhance NCDs education, literacy, and access to diagnostics.

“I have equally developed NCDs board games, the NCD training module for schools and communities and through other projects and initiatives developed through my organisation, Stowelink Foundation. We still have lots of ground to cover but so far so good," he said.