Psychosocial Challenges Experienced by Children with Reading Difficulties in Upper Primary School: A Case of Rare Gem Talent School, Kitengela, Kajiado County

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of visual health communication messages on overall message evaluations by first time fathers. Its objectives were to; determine whether visual messages contributed to perceptions of fathers regarding exclusive breastfeeding, determine how effective the visual messages were in contributing to fathers’ efficacy to support exclusive breastfeeding process and to find out to what extent visual messages contributed to fathers support for exclusive breastfeeding process. The study targeted males who were first time fathers or whose partners were expectant at the time of conducting the research. Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of ten respondents. Interviews were used in data collection, which analyzed thematically. The study revealed that visual materials were predominately targeted to women, they were not easily accessible and available and that they did not portray the role that fathers could play in supporting exclusive breastfeeding. Likewise, they did not address their information needs nor the fears fathers had regarding their ability to support exclusive breastfeeding process. The study concluded that the majority of fathers had interacted with the visual messages in form of posters at the hospital. As a result, the fathers did not get to the proximity required for them to help in influencing their perception towards the support for exclusive breastfeeding. It recommended that health communication message designers should design their visual messages in a way that encourage men to be involved in exclusive breastfeeding process. Further, campaign developers and message designers should design campaign messages that normalize breastfeeding, without paying unnecessary attention to alarming messages such as perception of fathers regarding breastfeeding in public.