Piloting Digital Training for Lay First Responders

Road traffic injuries are a leading cause of death globally, particularly affecting low and middle-income countries where emergency medical services (EMS) may be scarce.

EMS reaches less than 10 percent of sub-Saharan Africans, a critical gap in access to prehospital healthcare; this need is especially acute in countries like Sierra Leone, which does not have EMS.

LFR International developed the Lay First Responder (LFR) model to address this gap by training lay people who are frequently on the roadssuch as motorcycle taxi driversto administer prehospital care, given their proximity to injury, wide self-dispersion in search of customers, and possession of a means of patient transportation.

After qualifying through a short in-person training program, lay first responders can respond quickly to accidents, providing emergency trauma care and transportation to medical facilities.

A previously-conducted pre-post study suggests the model improves trainees emergency care knowledge and skills while significantly expanding access to emergency care for the community.

LFR seeks to convert its training curriculum to a digital program on a mobile application, which can more cost-effectively reach trainees by providing a digital approach to scale its training in resource-limited settings.

With support from Development Innovation Ventures, LFR International will conduct a small-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of digital versus in-person training on lay first responders knowledge and skills retention.

The study also seeks to identify the qualities that lead an individual to be a super responder, i.e., individuals who were identified in a prior study as more likely to respond to incidents.

If successful, the RCT results could validate the scalability of the LFR model, making it attractive to public sector partnerships and leading to broader adoption across West Africa, cost-effectively addressing a critical public health challe