InnovationLabs is very pleased to share the news that our work with UNICEF has been named as a finalist for the Innovation Leader Impact Awards for 2018.
Here’s the story …
In 2014 there were more than 300 reported cases of polio in Pakistan. In 2018 so far, there have been only three. This massive progress to protect the lives of children is the result of the dedicated efforts of thousands of people, who are delivering vaccines to millions of children throughout the country, and in some cases risking their lives to do so. InnovationLabs is honored to have participated in this work.
As you know, polio is a debilitating disease that was once a global epidemic, causing thousands of children to lose the use of their legs, and to suffer throughout their lives.
The vaccines were developed in the 1950s, and slow but steady progress has been made to protect children worldwide. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a joint undertaking of many agencies, foundations and nations with the goal of eliminating polio worldwide, including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International, vaccine manufacturers, and health ministries in dozens of nations.
While tremendous progress has been achieved, as most of the world is now polio free, pockets of active wild polio virus remain in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of Africa. 
Eradicating the virus from these last pockets is a difficult undertaking, as many are war or conflict zones where health care standards are low or non-existent, and where health care workers cannot go safely.
UNICEF is working with local leaders to promote and educate government officials and community members to bring both knowledge and vaccines to even the most remote outposts. A key element of this process is training the thousands of front line workers who deliver vaccinations multiple ties each year to millions of children.
But when UNICEF recognized that these workers were not receiving the right type of training, they engaged InnovationLabs to conduct an extensive program of innovation research to enable a complete redesign of the curriculum and all of the supporting materials.
InnovationLabs conducted extensive ethnographic field studies in Kenya, Somalia, and Pakistan, interacting directly with front line workers and supervisors and learning a great deal about the challenges they face in delivering vital vaccines. Applying design thinking methodology, we identified the strengths in the system as well as some key gaps, and then designed an entirely new curriculum including all of the associated materials.
And here is where some of the key innovations lie. Many polio workers are not literate, nor are the families whose children they are vaccinating, and yet it’s critical to the success of the effort that important health messages be conveyed clearly and effectively. To overcome this problem, InnovationLabs realized that a comic book could deliver essential information in an accessible format, and so we developed the characters and the script, and our graphic team and partners produced the art work.
This proved to be so successful that it’s been produced in two versions and in three languages, Urdu, English, and French, for use in both Pakistan and throughout Africa. More than 40,000 copies of the comic have been distributed in Pakistan alone, and ten of thousands more in Africa.
Derivative versions are now being developed for use in schools, which means that hundreds of thousands more will be distributed soon, all delivering vital health information directly to children not only about polio, but about the importance of vaccination, hand washing, proper food preparation, hydration, and clean water, all critically important messages to protect health in developing regions.
We also developed a fully interactive web site for use by UNICEF teams globally, and a complete training kit. The new materials are now being used very successfully throughout Africa and Southwest Asia.
In summary, we notice that while InovationLabs has published many books over the years, it seems that our “best seller” is … a comic book! Who would have thought…?!
We’re honored to be able to support this important work, and also honored to be recognized by Innovation Leader, the world’s leading innovation publication, for our role.