The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Seven lessons from scaling up mHealth in India

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Our challenge: How do we ensure families in India have timely information about childbirth, childcare and family planning, during pregnancy and in the first year of the child's life? The innovation: High-quality health information and advice to Indian families - particularly in rural areas – through the growing use of basic mobile phones. Our human-centred design mobile health solution has been scaled to 17 states by the Government of India to empower families and frontline health workers to improve child mortality and maternal health. Kilkari (a baby’s gurgle) is our mobile messaging service designed to reinforce frontline health workers’ counselling by delivering information to families to help healthier choices and lives. Combined with tools and training for frontline health workers – our Mobile Academy training course, and Mobile Kunji tool to support frontline workers in communicating with families - the service is strengthening this ‘last mile’ of the health system, to increase their knowledge, skills and confidence in communicating, and reinforcing their information. Aiding with all of this is the trusted voice of ‘Dr Anita', the fictional narrator across our suite of mHealth services – Mobile Academy, Mobile Kunji and Kilkari – providing health information, guidance and friendship to families across India. Kilkari’s free, weekly, stage-based audio messages about pregnancy, childbirth, childcare and family planning are delivered directly to families’ phones as one pre-recorded call per week for 72 weeks, linked to the stage of pregnancy or child’s age and timed for the highest-risk periods, between the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is a year old. Available in five languages – Hindi, Bihari, Oriya, Assamese and Bengali – family mobile phones are automatically subscribed as soon as a pregnancy is registered in the government database. Following two independent evaluations and analyses from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University, now published in a special supplement of BMJ Global Health, here are the lessons we learned over a decade of digital development:

Comments

Thanks for sharing. I found this blog (above which is an excerpt of, I believe) to be useful, considering how much information we have on The CI site about Kilkari. One of the lessons learned was that "timed and targeted information can improve modern contraceptive use and immunisation". Specifically, as the BBC Media Action blog indicates (data from the RCT, which as we know - was conducted by JHU): "When Dr Anita gave advice on condom use, people listened: Those who listened to Kilkari were associated with a 3.7% higher use of modern reversible contraceptives; the number rose to 7.3% among those who heard 50% or more of Kilkari content, compared to non-listeners – largely driven by increased condom use. Effects were even larger for families with a male child (9.9% increase), in the poorest socioeconomic strata (15.8% increase), and in disadvantaged castes (12.0% increase). The evaluation also found higher rates of immunisation among infants at 10 weeks (2.8%)." It's great to see such rigorous evaluation of communication programmes.