The Drum Beat 461 - The C-Change Programme
We have very sad news to commence this issue of The Drum Beat.
Colin Fraser, one of the most influential figures in communication for development, has died. His intelligence and skill, combined with the warmest of personalities, driving passion, and a humble persona ensured a huge personal contribution to poverty alleviation and social justice. Our heavy hearts and loving thoughts are with his partner Sonia and family. Please feel free to make a donation to the CLL charity that the family is supporting, by visiting this website [If you wish to send a message to the family please do feel free to email Warren at wfeek@comminit.com and he will forward.]
We also honour the lives of 2 WHO colleagues, Dr. Shams Kakar, Regional Polio Officer, and Dr. Mamoon, Campaign Coordinator, and their driver who were killed in a bomb blast whilst preparing the latest polio eradication campaign in Afghanistan. Our thoughts, support, and condolences to their families.
This issue of The Drum Beat focuses on the Communication for Change (C-Change) Programme and some of its current activities. As a resource partner of C-Change, The Communication Initiative will be featuring reports and studies from C-Change as they become available.
This issue of The Drum Beat was developed based on information provided by C-Change to The Communication Initiative.
- General information about the C-Change PROGRAMME.
- Information about C-Change PARTNERS.
- C-Change's focus on COMPETENCY-BUILDING.
- C-Change's country programme ACTIVITIES.
- C-Change operational RESEARCH.
- C-Change KNOWLEDGE SHARING activities.
- C-Change CONTACTS.
- 2 New POLICY BLOGS on The CI’s Communication, Media, and Development Policy website.
This issue of The Drum Beat introduces "Communication for Change" (C-Change), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s new flagship programme dedicated to improving the effectiveness and sustainability of behaviour change communication (BCC) and social change communication programmes worldwide. This is an agency-wide programme; it receives funding from USAID's Global Health Bureau, the Economic Growth Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) Bureau, and Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) Bureau. In its first year, C-Change has launched an operational research agenda and initiated country programmes that address HIV and AIDS, malaria, family planning and reproductive health, and increased use of primary health care services.
C-Change is working to take communication strategies and programmes to scale, applying the substantial body of existing knowledge about behaviour and social change and state-of-the-art research to key interventions, and strengthening the growing number of communication professionals, organisations, and academic institutions in countries around the world.
C-Change and its partners are working with the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), and family planning and reproductive health programmes to ensure that the behaviour change communication knowledge and expertise that exists worldwide is utilised by these major initiatives.
Led by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), the C-Change Programme has forged a network of global, regional, and local partners that bring a range of experience and skills to the project. These partners include the Centre for Media Studies, India; New Concept Information Systems, India; Social Surveys, South Africa; Soul City, South Africa; Straight Talk, Uganda; and U.S.-based partners CARE, Internews, Ohio University, IDEO, and University of Washington. The Communication Initiative and Communication for Social Change Consortium (CFSC) serve as resource partners.
New Center of Excellence cultivates health communication knowledge in southern Africa
C-Change is supporting the establishment of a Center of Excellence in South Africa that will offer certificate-, diploma-, and master's-level training in health communication across countries in southern Africa. The Center will focus on improving competencies in social and behaviour change communication of implementers in the region. The initiative is being led by C-Change partner Soul City's Institute for Health and Development Communication, in collaboration with the School of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. The Center is also receiving financial support from the United Kingdom (UK) Department for International Development (DFID). A lecturer responsible for coordination of this programme is being recruited. Details for this position will soon be available in The CI's Development Classifieds Vacancies listing.
Internews engages journalists as partners in behaviour change communication
C-Change partner Internews is building on its "Local Voices" health journalism training model to offer specialised training to aspiring health journalists. The training focuses on educating journalists on health issues and working with them on story development and investigative journalism. Internews is also developing an inventory of journalist training programmes currently used by organisations and educational institutions across Africa.
Namibia: Strengthening BCC competencies of NGOs
In many PEPFAR programmes, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) rely on community organisations and volunteers to reach communities with critical HIV and AIDS messages and interventions. Yet, many of these staff may have minimal training, supervision, and access to tools for reaching community members and influencing positive behaviour change. At the request of the USAID mission in Namibia, C-Change is working with PEPFAR partners to build the capacity of NGOs to design and implement BCC interventions that address HIV prevention, testing, and care and support practices. Capacity-building strategies include formal and non-formal training and mentoring, and direct technical assistance to improve the effectiveness of their interventions.
Lesotho: Multiple Concurrent Partners (MCP) as a major driver of HIV
In Lesotho, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) predicts that seven out of every eight HIV infections in the coming year will be directly or indirectly related to multiple concurrent partnerships (MCP). C-Change is executing research and implementation activities to address this complex behaviour pattern that appears to be a significant factor fueling the epidemic in Lesotho and elsewhere.
At the request of Lesotho's National AIDS Commission (NAC) and the Ministry of Health (MOH), C-Change is assisting with the dissemination and implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Communication Strategy, and 'translating' the strategy into accessible formats for mid-level officials and grass roots community leaders. The programme is working to identify ways to trigger community dialogues around the issue of MCP and to address social norms that support the related behaviours.
C-Change regional partner Social Surveys has just finished the field portion of rapid formative research on kinship networks to determine barriers within communities to discussing multiple concurrent partnerships. The research will inform messages and interventions for a national BCC campaign. C-Change regional partners Soul City and CARE, as well as Phela, a health and development communication organisation, are collaborating with the Government of Lesotho and NAC in this BCC programme.
Madagascar: Integrating reproductive health and environmental activities into ongoing youth programmes
Madagascar has rich bio-diversity. However, local and national organisations have concluded that conservation efforts will be offset by population growth unless the birth rate (which is as high as 6.9 in some areas) declines. Integrating reproductive health and environmental activities has become a national priority.
C-Change is building on an ongoing youth group activity in Madagascar—the Ankoay (eagle) programme. To reach Ankoay status, youth groups must carry out HIV/AIDS, hygiene, adolescent reproductive health, and environmental activities, which they select from "best practices" activity menus. C-Change's mission is to dramatically scale up the Ankoay model via scout troops, schools, and sports teams.
Albania: Increasing use of family planning services
Albania has one of the lowest rates of modern contraceptive use among countries in the European region (see the 2002 Demographic and Health Survey). Couples rely heavily on traditional contraceptive methods and emergency contraception for family planning purposes, and abortion is also common. C-Change is using BCC to increase the use of family planning services available in the private and public sectors, to counter misconceptions about family planning interventions and methods, and to improve informed choice for contraceptives. An integrated communication programme, including a national media campaign and community-based interventions, will focus on changing social norms in Albania among young men and women.
Europe and Eurasia: Empowering the health care consumer
While infectious diseases remain a threat in many countries in Europe and Eurasia (USAID's E&E Region), the majority of deaths in the region - 85% - are actually due to non-communicable diseases and injuries (see "The Europe and Eurasia Health Vulnerability Analysis, Annual Report - September 2007" from USAID). According to USAID, few programmes address this alarming statistic. Much of the health funding in the region over the past decade has focused on health care reform and donor-driven programmes that address infectious diseases. Programmes that address disease prevention and health promotion are rare.
Using the Ottawa Charter as a framework - according to the Charter, health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health by developing personal skills, embracing community action, and fostering appropriate public policies, health services, and a supportive environment - C-Change fielded an assessment that focused on 3 countries representing distinct geographical regions within E&E - Kyrgyzstan, Albania, and Armenia. The assessment included in-depth interviews with donors, government health promotion officials, NGOs, and media representatives, and visits to active USAID-funded projects and health facilities in rural sites. In October 2008, the results of this assessment will be presented in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the international conference celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Alma-Ata Declaration.
C-Change's operational research aims to improve the effectiveness of programming both in terms of immediate and long-term effect and to provide evidence of the impact of communication interventions. A critical challenge for C-Change is how to produce social change. The following questions serve as their initial knowledge generation agenda:
- What is the role of horizontal communication and social networks in social change? What types of interventions are effective at influencing horizontal communication and at changing behaviour?
- How do the social norms, especially those that underlie health behaviour, change and how can communication programmes facilitate these changes?
- Is the SCALE® social systems approach to social change effective at achieving family planning, reproductive health, HIV prevention, and other health and development outcomes?
- What are the most effective and cost-effective ways to allocate resources among the various behaviour change communication channels or among the several components in a strategic communication plan?
- What are the best ways to engage the media as partners in health communication?
- What measures do we need to understand how our programmes work and to assess the impact of our programmes?
SCALE® Approach
One of the key approaches that C-Change is introducing is SCALE®, a process for catalysing across-the-board change involving multiple stakeholders who unite around a common vision, network among themselves, and take action to produce system-wide change in a short period. (Please note: The SCALE name and process graphic are trademarked to AED.) SCALE® evolved out of the experience of the USAID-funded GreenCOM project and draws on a range of social and behavioural change theories. To date, SCALE® has been used in the agricultural and tourism sectors (For case studies of the SCALE® process, please see "Transforming the Moroccan Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Sector to Compete in the New Global Economy" and "Transforming the Kenyan Dairy Feeds System to Improve Farmer Productivity and Livelihoods"). C-Change will continue this effort by supporting the use of SCALE® to improve community-based natural resource management in southern Africa. In addition, the programme will evaluate the effect of applying SCALE® to address reproductive health in India.
Additional planned research activities include studies focused on gender norms and social network approaches to increasing contraceptive prevalence, as well as operations research on indicators and factors affecting reporting about family planning.
C-Change has launched two e-newsletters to provide practitioners with selected information about communication for behaviour and social change.
C-Channel: Information from peer-reviewed journals
C-Channel, launched in September 2008 by AED-SATELLIFE, presents a selection of peer-reviewed journal articles about communication for behaviour and social change. Articles for C-Channel are selected from among those published recently in several content areas, including family planning, reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, malaria, and social and gender norms. Primary sources of information are peer-reviewed journals, some of which are Open Access journals. C-Channel makes the abstracts and full journal articles available free of charge to readers in the developing world, via email. The free-of-charge feature is based on long-standing agreements that AED-SATELLIFE has forged with a wide number of health and medical publishers. For readers in the industrialised world, the title with a short descriptive note is placed in the email with a link to the full article, freely available in Open Access, or downloadable upon payment of a fee to the journal. To subscribe, please see:
Developing world: click here.
Industrialised world: click here.
C-Change Picks: Highlighting recent behaviour and social change communication programme experiences, research results, and evaluations
Implemented by C-Change resource partner, The Communication Initiative, C-Change is supporting a new periodic e-magazine. C-Change Picks focuses on recent case studies, reports, analyses, and resources on communication for behaviour and social change to address health, environment, and civil society. In health, the current emphasis is on family planning and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, and malaria.
C-Change Picks seeks new knowledge and experiences in behaviour change and social change communication. Please contribute your case studies, strategic thinking, support materials, and any other relevant documentation.
To send your materials or to subscribe to this e-magazine, please contact cchange@comminit.com
Progress on all of these activities will be reported periodically in The Drum Beat. Readers are also invited to visit the C-Change website. For additional information, contact Susan Zimicki, C-Change Programme Director, szimicki@aed.org
Communication, Media, and Development Policy
...analysis, ideas and debates on development policy Issues from communication and media perspectives...
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by James Deane
A Rose by Any Other Name is Still a...the basis for one coherent Communication and Media Development field of work
by Warren Feek
Please read and contribute your reactions and comments through "Post a Comment or Question" (bottom of each blog).
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
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