In India, youth (people ages 18–29 years) represent a large proportion of the population, at 27%. They represent an even higher proportion of the tuberculosis (TB) burden in India; 38% of people with TB fall within this age range. The challenge of TB among youth in India, however, also presents opportunities to harness the energy and reach of India’s youth population. In one survey, nearly one-third of youth respondents said they were interested in volunteering for TB-free activities.
But what does meaningful youth engagement look like? PATH, through Johnson & Johnson Foundation* support and formative work, is building a roadmap to increase knowledge about TB, build a cadre of youth volunteers, and improve health-seeking behaviors in order to reach India’s TB elimination goals.
To do this, PATH is tapping into learnings from a high-impact digital youth activation campaign, leveraging a previously developed sustainability framework to support health care workers to engage youth in TB volunteering initiatives in India, and introducing new models for youth engagement with health care workers in urban poor communities. We are scaling these initiatives through collaborations with India’s National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP), TB Alert India, Johnson & Johnson, and the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, to deliver impactful solutions for marginalized communities affected by TB.
#BetheChangeforTB
The #BetheChangeforTB campaign, supported by Johnson & Johnson in collaboration with NTEP, implemented multiple concurrent activities to reach youth through digital channels. These included activating youth by connecting them to an online platform where they could sign up as volunteers and access curated TB educational resources; partnering with youth icons including a famous actress and rapper to facilitate change through music; using google platforms and ads on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to reach youth audiences; and producing engaging and quirky educational content designed to spark conversation around TB.
The campaign’s success exceeded even its own ambitious goals, reaching 55 million people against a target of 20 million. From this, 119,000 people engaged in health-seeking behavior through the campaign-provided resources and 36,000 youth were recruited as volunteers. These results demonstrate the enormous impact of targeted digital media on activating youth as agents of change, both for volunteerism as well as enabling knowledge and behavior change.
“#BetheChangeforTB is a game-changing initiative, engaging youth in the digital spaces where they interact and get their information from.”— Dr. Rajendra Joshi, Deputy Director General-TB, Central TB Division
To ensure that the success of the campaign was well understood and could be replicated, PATH disseminated project learnings and best practices for implementers and funders, and led strategic engagement and advocacy with the NTEP in India. These activities ensured that successful campaign components could be replicated and scaled up sustainably, continuing the momentum for TB advocacy and prevention among youth in India.
Youth TB Volunteer Engagement Framework
The #BetheChangeforTB campaign received positive feedback from all stakeholders, including calls to sustainably scale up the activities. In response to this, PATH designed a framework for engaging youth in TB volunteering initiatives in India. The framework has two goals: to support health care workers in empowering youth through a comprehensive TB volunteer program, and to establish a recognition system for youth TB volunteers. To this end, PATH crafted a comprehensive approach for end-to-end implementation and management of a volunteer program, covering awareness generation, advocacy, campaigns, and ongoing interventions including screening within social networks.
This initiative also prioritizes government ownership by creating a crucial link from youth volunteers to NTEP and health care workers, and enabling NTEP and health care workers to provide oversight and support for TB health promotion activities and connect interested volunteers to other opportunities to support TB efforts. With this framework now in hand, NTEP can use it as a “guidebook” to scale up youth engagement in TB prevention and care activities.
“Take Charge Against TB” program
The “Take Charge Against TB” program is moving the needle on TB-free urban poor communities through the dual activation of frontline health care workers and the youth populations they serve. This initiative, taking place across three cities in 2025—Delhi, Hyderabad, and Pune—seeks to address health care inequities and underdiagnosis of TB in these communities.
A digital image from the “Take Charge Against TB” program. Credit: "Take Charge Against TB" program, a public health initiative of Johnson & Johnson in collaboration with PATH.
The program strengthens health care workers’ skills in TB screening and referral, as well as their capabilities to address stigma and instill trust within communities. Through this, both TB knowledge and health practices can be improved, and effective TB screening and referral can increase.
The “Take Charge Against TB” program also includes innovative approaches whereby youth TB volunteers are empowered to connect their communities to the health system to strengthen TB prevention and care. These approaches include digital and in-person youth volunteer recruitment, on-boarding on the basics of TB, linkage to mentors for ongoing coaching, volunteering activities focusing on spreading awareness on TB in the community, and recognition mechanisms to motivate volunteers to support health care workers in TB health promotion efforts.
Harnessing youth energy to achieve TB elimination goals
The theme for World TB Day 2025, Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver, calls upon the global TB community to come together to fight TB through concrete action, increased funding, and scale-up of evidence-based interventions with tangible results. Engaging youth in India to support health care workers in TB elimination efforts meets this call by empowering the next generation to capitalize on their energy and commitment as changemakers in their communities.
*Johnson & Johnson Foundation is a registered charitable organization that reflects the commitment of Johnson & Johnson to create a world without health inequities by closing the gaps between communities and the care they need.
