Date of Award

6-9-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2022.

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Silvia Figueira

Abstract

There is a lack of effective education about sexual health for women in rural Uganda. Compared to the rest of the world, Uganda has a very high incidence rate of cervical cancer. This is much higher than it should be because it is well established that the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the primary cause of cervical cancer, and vaccinations for HPV have been available in rural Uganda since 2006. However, most rural Ugandan women are not vaccinated due to poor vaccination delivery, negative attitudes towards vaccination, and other social cultural factors. The existing sexual education system run by the Ugandan national government is ineffective, and the taboo nature of this topic makes talking about sexual health in local communities difficult.

Rose Academies, a humanitarian organization based in Uganda, contacted us through SCU’s Frugal Innovation Hub to develop a mobile application to address these issues. Our proposed solution is SengaSafe, which would solve these issues in three ways. The first is that by making information about sexual health more easily accessible, through both the widespread usage of our app in rural Ugandan communities and the visual nature of the app, removing illiteracy as an obstacle to learning. The second was by making sexual health topics less taboo through an unobtrusive educational module system and by having our app be used only as a tool by volunteer teachers, so they can break into the discussion more easily. The third was by integrating a static map module that shows nearby vaccine clinics. An evaluation of the effectiveness of our application will have to wait until it is deployed within Uganda, although we expect good results. Ideas for future improvement include a dynamic integration with Google Maps and the inclusion of more textual information, so the app can be more useful without a teacher.

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