Our research team designed WASHmobile, an innovative mobile health (mHealth) program that promotes WASH behaviors among diarrhea patient households and those at high risk for diarrhea outbreaks (“PICHA7” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and “CHoBI7” in Bangladesh).

Our work started in 2013 with formative research and an RCT of the Cholera Hospital Based Intervention for 7 Days (CHoBI7), a targeted WASH program for cholera patient households in Bangladesh, which significantly reduced cholera. In 2016, in partnership with the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, we expanded CHoBI7 to all diarrhea patients and developed the CHoBI7 mobile health (mHealth) to remove the need for costly home visits.

These adaptions to CHoBI7 allowed the program to reach millions more people across Bangladesh. Results from our CHoBI7 mHealth RCT showed significant reductions in diarrhea and stunting, with sustained improvements in WASH behaviors at 12 months. This was the first RCT to evaluate a WASH mHealth program.

To adapt and test this approach in a new context, in 2020 we partnered with the Democratic Republic of the Congo Ministry of Health to design the Preventative Intervention for Cholera for 7 Days (PICHA7) mHealth program and conduct a RCT of this program. Consistent with CHoBI7, the PICHA7 mHealth RCT showed significant reductions in diarrhea and stunting and sustained WASH behaviors at 12 months.

Given the success of WASHmobile in two very distinct contexts in reducing diarrhea and improving child growth in 2025 we developed this WASHmobile website to promote this approach globally.