At North Star we strive for continuous innovation to tailor our services to the needs of our clients. That is why we developed STAR DRIVER, a new health programme, especially for truck drivers! We launched the pilot of STAR DRIVER in three Roadside Wellness Centres in Kenya: Emali, Maai Mahiu, and Salgaa. Another important step for us to provide more truck drivers more often with high quality health services.
Health and prevention are not top of mind for truck drivers; their health-seeking behaviour is often strongly problem-related. At the same we learned from many discussions with truck drivers that they seek for opportunities to gain recognition and to advance in their career.
With the support of a marketing expert seconded to North Star by Johnson & Johnson, our team in East Africa developed a programme that is bringing health and recognition together, that acknowledges the important work that is done by truck drivers and motivates them to alter their health seeking behaviour.
STAR DRIVER incentivises and reminds drivers to visit our RWCs more frequently and thus to benefit from basic health checks, new occupational health checks (vision, hearing), HCT, and health and safety trainings and motivates them to act as a role model for their peers. Upon registration each driver receives a membership card and a wristband as is his visible connection to the programme. During each visit at our RWC we offer a predefined set of medical services to check the driver´s health. With support from the Kenyan Ministry of Health whose representatives trained our clinical officers, we are able to offer vision and hearing tests in our RWCs – an important step to tailor our services even more to the needs of truck drivers.
In order to foster compliance throughout the programme – four visits within a year – we developed a SMS application that reminds drivers to attend the RWCs for revisit and to inform them about their programme status. A successful completion of the programme is certified with the STAR DRIVER certificate, an attractive asset for a driver’s career, a truck badge and acknowledged with the opportunity to enter a prize draw.
Join us and the STAR DRIVERs on this journey!
See below impressions from the team trainings in Emali, Maai Mahiu and Salgaa.
