Health Hubb 2022 Update

The Wits Health Hubb, now in its third year of operation, aims to activate health consciousness and personal wellbeing among youth, to increase community access to healthcare, and to give meaningful professional work experience, training, and qualification in the healthcare domain for formerly unemployed youth.

for them. With the 2021/22 training coming to an end, we released our recruitment advert for 25 more youth who are NEET (not in employment, education, or training) to join the programme for 2022–2023. The learnership advert was live for just four days and we received over 1200 applications. This demonstrates the how well known the programme has become and the influence on the lives of young people as well as the Soweto community.

 Our first cohort of twenty young people from Soweto, started their training to become Health Promotion Officers in October 2020. This group sat for their final exam in 2021 and obtained a 100% pass rate We held a graduation ceremony for them at Jabulani in June 2022 and over 80% of this cohort are now in employment. We are overjoyed to see how the programme has impacted our graduates long after they have completed their training, and we wish them the best of luck in all their future endeavours.

Our second cohort of 24 health advocates (2021-2022), are currently training in Soweto primary care clinics and scheduled to take the Health Promotion Officer (HPO) NQF3 exam end October. Academically, this group is thriving, and we are eager to see what the future holds

 Earlier this year, we partnered with Temple University (USA) and the Phila Sonke Wellness Initiative, an NGO that provide stroke rehabilitation and cardiovascular risk reduction services through exercise programmes at Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto. Our health advocates went door-to-door through the Dobsonville community offering basic home health screening, including blood pressure (BP) measures. During this twoweek study, over 1000 community members had their BP measured. One third of adults had high blood pressure (hypertension) and were referred to clinics. Almost 40% of adults were found with BP in the pre-hypertensive range putting them at risk for developing hypertension. These adults were offered a free 3-month membership of the Dobsonville exercise programme (funded by the US partners).

Follow-up calls and interviews suggest that referrals to local services (gyms or clinics) are frequently refused by community members but in those that do accept the referral, people sent to the gym are far more likely to attend, than those sent to clinics. Analysis of the interview transcripts is ongoing to understand the reasons for this.

The BP measures were also sent to the International Society of Hypertension global initiative of May Measurement Month (MMM), a campaign to explore how successful countries are at identifying, diagnosing, and effectively treating hypertension worldwide.

 Neo King Mathe (28) from Naturena, one of the current cohort members of health advocates, says he is enjoying the programme and has learned a lot – “I wasn’t familiar with health before, it’s a new thing to me and I have learned a lot”. He is also a musician and wants to fuse health messaging with his music “I haven’t heard anyone doing anything like that, they always talk about alcohol, smoking, they only promote that in their music”. He says that this programme has taught him to be more compassionate, patient, and calm, and adds that he likes making a positive impact in other people’s lives.

Since its inception in 2020, the Health Hubb has reached over 35,000 community members in Soweto with basic health screening and health promotion.

 In response to community requests, the HUBB held two successful health awareness campaigns at Jabulani on the topics of chronic illness, and substance abuse and mental health

The events brought in key local service providers including SANCA, SADAG, Amatyma, Revolife and Phila Sonke to provide information, testing, support and assistance to the community. During the second of these events, the HUBB team also organised for the Shoprite mobile soup kitchen to give out free soup and bread, feeding over 300 people on the day