By Seline Nyangere
From his childhood, Stephen Ogweno, the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Stowelink battled obesity and hypertension. His life changed when he joined high school and met two teachers who were willing to walk him through his recovery journey, an event that led him to start an organization that creates awareness about NCDs.
“When I joined high school, two teachers noticed me and they helped me walk the journey through proper dieting, they got me through drugs and medication to be able to control my obesity and by the time I was exiting high school, I was already on the path to improve my weight. When I joined campus I founded an organization called Stowelink Foundation which focuses on awareness and improving diagnostics for the different tests for NCDS, improving access to literacy and policies of NCDs”, revealed Ogweno,
His invention led to improved literacy and open conversations on NCDs in communities within Kenya and Rwanda and in the process they were able to roll out a project on cancer and hypertension in young people.
“In 2015, we did projects on cancer and hypertension with a focus on young people. As the years went by we expanded from Nairobi to other counties in Kenya and we did a project on cardiovascular health it was called My Heart Ke, it was a nationwide project that brought young people from different parts of the country to talk about cardiovascular health through different means such as poetry, art, photography and videography and at the same time having diagnostics”, said Ogweno.
Ogweno developed an online platform called Lifesten Health with the purpose of helping individuals frequently check their health lifestyle using a smartphone.
“In 2023 I developed an online platform called Lifesten Health that rewards you for being healthy. The more you engage in physical activities and nutritional health, the more you earn points and these points you can redeem from our wide range of partners and you can earn gifts e.g., spa treatment and doctors’ consultation”, said Ogweno.
Ogweno added that “the combination of technology where you are able to screen yourself, you are able to access tools, guidelines on how to improve your health through daily health activities and access health screening is what we developed in Rwanda and we partnered with the ministry of health in Rwanda to see if it can actually be used to screen people who don’t visit hospitals” added Ogweno.
As NCD youth champion, success does not come easily, Ogweno is currently facing a challenge on how he can ensure there is a digital health platform that can monitor personal health at the same time help them access diagnostics from wherever they are or at the comfort of their homes before visiting hospitals for further diagnostics.
His main goal is to be able to reach at least 1 billion people.
“My goal is to reach the next one billion Africans and positively improve their health and lifestyle. This is because NCDs are growing at a higher pace, it is through their growth that I am challenged to know what are interventions, invented to ensure the 1 billion people do not contract these diseases and we are able to improve their health and wellness, so this is my challenge and in the next few years I am hoping that I can be able to expand my reach to help individuals improve their health”, concluded Ogweno.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 75% of deaths globally, a notion that has prompted youths like Ogweno to leverage technology to improve people’s literacy on non-communicable diseases, and monitor their health.
