WhatsApp-based Anemia Care Programme
HEALTH TECH · BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
Product lead — design, build, analytics, reporting
May 2025 → Mar 2026
NGO health partner
An NGO health partner needed a scalable, low-cost system to deliver a structured anemia care plan to community health beneficiaries over 12 weeks — with no existing WhatsApp health delivery infrastructure in place and strict content compliance requirements on the messaging platform.
- Designed the full 12-week WhatsApp message journey (43+ registered templates across three language tracks), configured the partner's chatbot platform, and built an engagement dashboard tracking week-on-week funnel metrics.
- Also led two UAT rounds before production launch, handled test-user exclusion and data migration, and presented programme findings directly to the partner team.
- A complementary FAQ chatbot — the "Care Companion" — was built using the NGO health partner's LLM infrastructure, constrained strictly to the anemia knowledge base to prevent off-topic responses.
Strong Week-1 engagement rate held above baseline for the full 12-week programme — significantly above typical SMS/email intervention norms. Week-on-week funnel tracking delivered clean partner reporting. Programme completed on schedule. Data and research paper outline are now complete, with full paper drafting underway.
Accepted WhatsApp Business Message Template pre-approval delays (per-language, per-template Meta registration) as the cost of using a zero-installation channel with the highest reach in the target population. Prioritised the partner's existing chatbot infrastructure over a custom build — faster deployment, lower maintenance overhead, but constrained customisation on the Tier II LLM escalation path.
“The programme gave participants something structured to come back to each week. That kind of consistency is harder to design than it sounds — most programmes lose people before they build any habit.”
12-Week Behavioural Arc
Anemia basics, nutritional facts, IFA adherence rationale. Establishing the “why” before asking for behaviour change.
Iron Tracker adherence check-ins, behavioural nudges, social proof stories, and an incentive call-to-action to sustain momentum mid-programme.
Interactive quizzes and polls to reinforce learning, plus a midway check-in to surface drop-off risk and re-engage wavering participants.
Final Hb test reminder to close the clinical loop, motivational close, and a thank-you sequence acknowledging programme completion.
Care Companion Chatbot
Alongside the structured journey, a reactive FAQ chatbot handled inbound queries from beneficiaries throughout the programme. Built on the NGO health partner's LLM infrastructure and constrained strictly to the anemia knowledge base — it would not answer questions outside that scope, preventing misinformation risk in a health context.
Tier I
Keyword and intent-matching routing for common anemia queries, consent interactions, and small talk — instant, low-latency responses.
Tier II — LLM
Complex queries escalated to the partner's LLM layer, answering only within the anemia knowledge base. Tag-based Q&A structure keeps responses contextually grounded.
Emergency Routing
Dedicated emergency intent detection. Users expressing distress or health emergencies were immediately redirected to the support team — no LLM in the critical path.
The Outcome
The programme demonstrated that WhatsApp — with the right message arc, multilingual content, and a constrained LLM chatbot as a companion — is a viable vehicle for sustained behavioural health interventions at community scale. The full engagement funnel, clean data export, and research paper outline are now complete. The architecture is replicable: message templates, chatbot logic, and analytics infrastructure are transferable to the next care plan deployment.