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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 11, 2002
USAID Chooses Group Led by Johns Hopkins Center for
Communication Programs for 5-Year Global Information Project
Grant to Fund Collection and Dissemination of Reproductive Health Information BALTIMORE—The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has selected a team consisting of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP), The Alan Guttmacher Institute, and Analytical Sciences Inc. to carry out a new $33 million, 5-year global reproductive health information project.
The Information and Knowledge for Optimal Health project, or “INFO,” will collect, synthesize and make widely available information on family planning and reproductive health. The project also will collect and disseminate best practices related to reproductive health from an array of partners in both the developed and the developing world. INFO plans to use a variety of technologies to enable health professionals and policy-makers to communicate with each other and to contribute to a comprehensive base of knowledge.
“We look forward to building on the Center's current work to create a new paradigm for knowledge sharing,” said Jane Bertrand, PhD, MBA, CCP director and professor of population and family health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We envision a world in which health professionals, health advocates, and concerned policy-makers all join in a network of knowledge sharing—a network that they can contribute to as easily as they can draw from it.”
CCP has managed the Population Information Project (PIP) since 1978, with support from USAID. The INFO project succeeds PIP. INFO will continue many of PIP's widely used products and services, including the quarterly review journal Population Reports, The Essentials of Contraceptive Technology handbook, the POPLINE bibliographic database, the collaborative website RH Gateway and the Photoshare collection of photographs on international health topics.
In addition, INFO is designed to create new opportunities to improve and enhance the flow of knowledge in every direction around the world. Working with worldwide health professionals' organizations, health information organizations in developing countries, other USAID-support organizations, and USAID country Missions. INFO plans to help build capabilities to generate and share information throughout the world.
In the INFO project, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a PIP partner for many years, will continue to publish its peer-reviewed journal International Family Planning Perspectives and will collaborate with CCP to enhance the ability of researchers to communicate their findings more effectively to policymakers and other important audiences.
Analytical Sciences Inc., a health sciences professional services firm, will apply new technologies to communicating health information. Under INFO, ASI will help build effective platforms for information-sharing and network-building.
With representatives in more than 30 countries, CCP is a pioneer in the field of strategic, research-based communication for behavior change and health promotion that helped transform the theory and practice of public health communication. To find out more about CCP, go to www.jhuccp.org.
For more information contact: Kim Martin at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6140; Fax: 410 659-6266 e-mail: press@jhuccp.org. PRESS ROOM: http://www.jhuccp.org/pressroom
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