By Deborah Akunyo

KIU, Main Campus - Journalism students have been urged to embrace health literacy and invest in telling stories related to health in society. This call was made by Phillip Andrew, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the African Health Grid Foundation (AFHEG) during a workshop on impactful health reporting held on the fifth floor of the Iddi Bassajjabala Memorial Library (IBML) on Thursday, January 23rd, 2025.

The African Health Grid Foundation (AFHEG) is a non-profit health organization in Uganda that aims to build a health-literate community by empowering young people with accurate health and environmental information.

During the workshop, students were among others introduced to reporting on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)- a condition where the body becomes resistant to certain medicines and how to carry out effective Health communication.

According to Phillip Andrew Mwebaze, the workshop was meant to inspire and motivate the upcoming journalists.

"We carried out this training to equip young journalists with the tools that can enable them to effectively report about health-related issues," he stated.

In a world where health literacy is not common, he said the foundation aims to create a world where communities thrive on equitable health solutions.

Mwebaza advised the young journalists to ‘’stay true to yourselves, and don't leave the ethical values you learnt about but also continue to report on issues that you have interests in."

Emmanuel Egonu, the Production Manager of the foundation added that students should always find a way to break down the hard scientific terminologies used by the medical persons so that the public can understand what they actually mean. He said using the simplest language eases understanding of the dangers of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).

According to James Nsubuga, a Microbiologist from Makerere University who led the session on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Journalism students need to learn about antimicrobial resistance because they have a greater voice to channel information into the communities. He added that journalists are also in a position to tailor information in a way that can reach to the people in the communities compared to scientists who can't tone down findings in a way that can be easily understood by a regular person.

Lecturers from the Journalism and Media Studies department were also in attendance. Susan Muhindo, one of the lecturers remarked, "The students will now be able to interpret, explain and simplify important information that they gather from their societies for better understanding."

The students were grateful for such an opportunity and called on the Department to organize more knowledge and skills workshops. They also shared their opinions on health literacy and impactful reporting.

According to Jacob Junior Munghesi, the President of the KIU Mass Communication Students’ Association (MACOSA), reporting about health should go beyond numbers affected by a particular disease or infection to analysing causes and ways of preventing it.

"People have less time to read a lot of content in the digital age, so health stories should always be accurate and informative,’’ he said.

Gloria Nakiyemba, a second-year student of Mass Communication said, "Now I know the importance of AMR and how bacterial infection is spread among the community. This is something I vaguely knew about and now I can comfortably talk about it to the public and even write stories to inform people about its dangers."

She also advised her fellow students to take part in workshops like this because there is a lot to learn especially the fact that games can be a way to spread important information to community people and also through these, we get to meet innovative people with unique ideas.

The Workshop concluded with an exciting session as students had a feel of virtual reality games and immersive storytelling.

Mwebaza thanked the KIU administration for enabling the workshop which he described as ‘’a very successful one,’’ and encouraged the students to turn the knowledge and skills attained into practice.