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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CCP Receives Nearly $1 Million from The Atlantic Philanthropies to Develop Television Serial Drama to Improve Health in Viet NamBALTIMORE—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP) has been awarded $940,000 by The Atlantic Philanthropies to develop a 26-episode serial drama for Vietnamese television. The television drama will use the principles of Entertainment-Education to weave public health messages into an entertaining storyline. The drama will promote preventative health issues such as home and traffic safety, HIV/AIDS, family planning, drug abuse, nutrition, immunization, and sanitation. “Entertainment-Education is a powerful vehicle to attract and engage large numbers of people in the drama and emotion that surrounds injury, illness, even death,” said CCP Director Jane T. Bertrand, PhD, MBA. “Audiences identify with the struggles and triumphs of memorable characters; moreover, they model their own behavior after the positive role models.” Injuries are a leading cause of death in Viet Nam, with an increased use of motor vehicles leading to more traffic accidents. Home remedies to treat household injuries such as burns also leads to unnecessary illness and death. And Viet Nam has a growing HIV/AIDS burden, primarily due to intravenous drug use. The country also has one of world's highest abortion rates. Malnutrition among children is a leading cause of child mortality in Viet Nam. CCP will partner with VN-TV to design, develop, produce, and promote the series. A pioneer in the entertainment-education approach, CCP plans to hold a design workshop in early 2003 that will bring stakeholders in Viet Nam's health issues together with local script writers to agree upon the objectives, message content, and story treatment for the series. The series is expected to premier in the summer of 2004. CCP will work with the Hanoi School of Public Health to evaluate the impact of the series. In addition to seeking healthier behaviors, CCP will work to improve the capacity of Vietnamese institutions to develop and evaluate health communication programs. With representatives in more than 30 countries, CCP, with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development, 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. The Bloomberg School of Public Health established CCP in 1988 to focus attention on the central role of communication in health behavior and to provide leadership in the field of behavior change communication. 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. |
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