The Abstinence and Risk Avoidance for Youth Program (ARK), a five-year project funded by PEPFAR, was launched in Kenya, Tanzania, and Haiti to address abstinence and mutual faithfulness for HIV prevention. Led by World Vision, the project focused on HIV prevention among girls age 10-24, with a secondary focus on boys of the same age. Parents, teachers, religious and traditional leaders, service providers, and other adults that interact with youth also benefited from ARK’s efforts. CCP supported the project by conducting trainings to help youth and adults form action groups and conduct outreach in their communities, using materials and tools developed by ARK. CCP designed training for youth on message development and script writing. CCP utilized radio spots, interactive discussions and listener groups to engage experts and lay people to discuss ARK messages.
Featured Projects
The Kenya Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, known locally as Tupange (‘Let’s Plan”), is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to empower youth living in Kenya’s urban slums to take control of their lives and build a brighter future with family planning. Over the course of five years, Tupange is assisting the government and private health providers to provide a full range of high quality family planning services to some of the country’s most vulnerable individuals in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Kakamega, and Machakos. With a goal of increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate in selected project areas by 20 percentage points, Tupange is being implemented through strong partnerships between Jhpiego, CCP, Marie Stopes Kenya, National Council for Population and Development, and Pharm Access Africa Ltd. CCP is using innovative demand creation approaches, including edutainment, to put an end to myths and misconceptions about contraceptives and make family planning a social norm among youth ages 20-29 in Kenya.
Similar initiatives are ongoing in Nigeria [3], Senegal, and India [4].
The Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, is the evaluation component of the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (Urban RH Initiative).The Knowledge Management (KM) team of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (JHU∙CCP) facilitates knowledge sharing; documents and disseminates best practices about successful urban family planning interventions; and ensures that data and information are available to inform reproductive health and family planning (RH/FP) programming at the local, country, regional and global levels for the MLE Project.
MLE is implemented in partnership with the University of North Carolina’s Carolina Population Center [6], the African Population and Health Research Center [6] and the International Center for Research on Women [6].
The Regional Outreach Addressing AIDS through Development Strategies (ROADS) project, a three-year project funded by USAID, addressed HIV prevention along the transport corridors of East Africa. Led by Family Health International (FHI), ROADS aimed to reduce HIV transmission, improve care, and reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS along Kenya and Uganda’s highways. CCP assisted ROADS in strengthening the institutional and technical capacity of implementing partners, as well as HIV and AIDS professionals. CCP developed approaches and tools for emerging issues, such as alcohol abuse and gender-based violence, and built the capacity of community-based partners to implement effective community outreach.
Research to Prevention (R2P) is a five-year HIV prevention project funded by USAID. R2P is led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and managed by CCP. R2Ppartners with faculty throughout the Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health, Medicine and Nursing, as well as Tulane University, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of North Carolina. R2P seeks to answer the question: What are the most effective interventions for preventing the spread of HIV? R2P aims to promote greater use of evidence in the design and implementation of HIV prevention programs in countries most affected by the HIV epidemic. In partnership with organizations in developing countries, R2P will conduct research to identify the most effective interventions for preventing HIV, promote increased use of data to guide programs and policies, and build capacity for applied research among health professionals.
Roads to a Healthy Future, a four-year project funded by USAID, builds on its predecessor, the Regional Outreach for Addressing AIDS through Development Strategies (ROADS) Project. Led by Family Health International (FHI), Roads to a Healthy Future seeks to fund new approaches and support African regional partners to design and expand HIV prevention and health activities in transport communities in Kenya and Uganda. The purpose of the project is twofold: to increase access to multi-sectoral HIV/AIDS, health, and other services for mobile populations and vulnerable communities along East African transport corridors; and to increase the capacity of African regional institutions to support rapid scale up of innovative practices in HIV and health. CCP partners with African institutions to advance strategic communication in health and development. CCP also provides technical assistance in a number of health areas and support the African Network for Strategic Communication in Health and Development (AfriComNet).
Staying Alive is MTV's global HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign aimed at youth. As a new extension of this project, MTV is repackaging and expanding Staying Alive materials for use by community-based youth outreach groups in an initiative dubbed, “Staying Alive in a Box.” With one year of funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CCP is leading a series of research studies that will provide formative input into program development, monitor implementation and assess impact of this initiative in three countries: Kenya, Zambia and Trinidad & Tobago. The research will include baseline and end-line surveys, reception analysis, focus group discussions and feedback from listening groups. Results of the studies will strengthen the Staying Alive in a Box strategy and demonstrate the potential of local community-based interventions tied to an international movement to shift youth norms, reduce stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and reduce risk behavior.
The Hib Initiative (Hib), a two-year project funded by GAVI/The Vaccine Fund, aimed to expedite and sustain evidence-informed decisions regarding Hib vaccination to prevent childhood meningitis and pneumonia. Hib is a consortium of four partners: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, WHO and CDC. Hib focuses on three strategic areas to support evidence-based decisions at the country level: coordination, communication and research. CCP conducted global, regional and country level communication activities to accelerate the introduction and uptake of Hib vaccine.
