Kenya: Opinion Leaders in Health

Health opinion leaders in Kenya (7 percent of the survey sample), were those who said people ask their opinion about health issues very often (daily), based on the AudienceScapes 2009 Kenya survey. Survey responses from these human hubs of health information indicated that they were more informed about news and information in general than were their peers, and also that they considered themselves to be in relatively better health (see Chart 3 below).

Who are these focal points of word-of-mouth health communication? As Table 1 shows, their average demographic profile is similar to the entire sample, although rural opinion leaders are more likely to be male, and all opinion leaders are slightly better educated and wealthier than the whole sample (though many of these differences are not statistically significant, based on the 2.2 percent margin of error).

Table 1
         

Sixty-one percent of opinion leaders said they were in excellent or very good health, compared to 52 percent of the whole sample who chose these responses (Chart 1).

Chart 1
                   

These health information elites were also more likely to say that they have the final word in their households about a variety of health decisions (Chart 2).

Chart 2
       

Finally, health opinion leaders have somewhat different information-gathering habits from the rest of the sample (Chart 3). They are more-active gatherers of information, for example, by using newspapers regularly at a much higher rate.

Chart 3
         

Interestingly, opinion leaders also reported higher rates of word-of-mouth sourcing of news and information than the national average, confirming their status as hubs, but suggesting that they may not always be introducing new information as much as they are helping to interpret information that is already being shared directly among friends, family and others in the community.

Since word-of-mouth communication about health is so active, it seems likely that information gathered and interpreted by opinion leaders in communities across Kenya reaches farther than media audience figures would suggest.

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