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
Advance Family Planning (AFP) is an evidence-based, three-year effort designed to help developing countries achieve universal access to reproductive health (MDG 5b). It aims to revitalize family planning programs through increased and more effective funding, and improved policy commitments at the local, national, and global levels. AFP is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The AFP Consortium is led by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Bill & Melinda Gates Institute. Partners include the Center for Communication Programs at JHU, African Women’s Development Fund, Partners in Population and Development, and Futures Group International.
AFP’s goal is to increase funding and improve policy commitments at all levels of national governments, among bilateral and multilateral donors, and the private sector. It builds on past investments and ongoing activities in reproductive health advocacy, leadership development, knowledge generation, and innovative service delivery projects.
The project focuses on providing policy makers with evidence on why family planning is a sound investment with dividends in terms of health, socio-economic development, the environment, and other areas. The message and the messengers will reflect each country’s situation and the interests of those policy makers.
The Avian and Pandemic Influenza Strategic Communication Action Planner (ASAP) project was funded by the Government of Japan. The initiative was spearheaded by a partnership of leading international organizations including UNICEF, FAO, WHO, CDC, and the World Bank. CCP’s role included developing a global Avian and Pandemic Influenza (A&PI) toolkit to guide strategic communication initiatives worldwide. The goal of the toolkit was to provide an easy-to-use strategic framework that would allow users to generate a communication strategy that met the minimum requirements for communication planning. This was deployed in a web-based environment which encouraged collaboration among health professionals in plan development. Phase II of the effort involved enabling UNICEF to manage the site and generate their own toolkits for different health issues using the same technology used for ASAP.
The PEPFAR Gender Initiative on Girls’ Vulnerability to HIV (GIGV), the first award under the HIV/AIDS Research Sector TASC 3 IQC, was funded by USAID. Known as the Go Girls! Initiative (GGI), the project was led by CCP in partnership with Macro International. The Initiative shifted the focus from individual risk-taking to contextual factors that render girls vulnerable. The purpose of GGI was to develop, implement and test social, gender and behavior change communication approaches, in an effort to reduce adolescent girls’ susceptibility to HIV infection. Approaches included: addressing contextual factors that present barriers to accessing education; increasing girls resilience through building life-skills; strengthening parents’ and other adults ‘ability to communicate with and support girls; and community dialogue and action. The CCP teams in Mozambique, Malawi and Botswana combined quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to develop a deeper understanding of girls’ vulnerability, evaluate the initiative and disseminate and discuss results with communities and national and international partners.
The Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3), a five-year project funded by USAID, envisions a world where health communication is transformative. Led by CCP in partnership with Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and NetHope, and specialized communication partners Internews, Population Services International (PSI) and Ogilvy Public Relations, HC3 will strengthen in-country capacity to implement state-of-the-art health communication in order to ensure the sustainability of evidence-based behavior change programming.
The Health Communication Partnership (HCP), a five-year project funded by USAID, linked five leading institutions to strengthen public health in the developing world through strategic communication programs. The project was led by CCP in partnership with Academy for Educational Development (AED), Save the Children, The International HIV/AIDS Alliance and Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. HCP sought to create an environment that supported individuals, families, and communities to act positively for their own health and to advocate for and gain access to quality services. HCP addressed family planning and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, nutrition, safe water and hygiene, and democracy and governance. The project had global reach, implementing programs and providing technical assistance in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Near East, and Europe/Eurasia.
The Health Communication Partnership Associate Award (HCP AA), a six-year project funded by USAID, addresses individual and community health priorities in Zambia. The project is led by Save the Children in partnership with CCP, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the Zambian Government and many local nongovernmental organizations in Zambia. HCP AA builds on the foundation of ZIHPCOMM which changed individual behavior, mobilized communities, created an enabling environment for sound health practices, and made social services more people-centered. CCP uses the strategic approaches of community mobilization, leadership, mobilization of youth, and message harmonization to support Zambian health priorities around HIV/AIDS, family planning and reproductive health, child survival, adolescent health and malaria.
The Jordan Health Communication Partnership (JHCP) worked with a broad variety of public and private partners to implement a comprehensive national health communication strategy. A nine-year project funded by USAID, JHCP carried out cross-cutting strategic, integrated behavior change communication activities under a unified national brand, “Our Health, Our Responsibility.” Communication activities fostered health competence by empowering individuals, families, communities, and institutions with the necessary knowledge, skills and resources to improve and sustain health.
Funded by the Global Health Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project [10] is designed to engage and serve a growing network of leading international public health organizations and thousands of health service providers, program managers and policy makers. The project’s coordination is led by CCP, with partnerships with FHI360 [11] and Management Sciences for Health [12] (MSH).
K4Health is focused on family planning and related public health topics for a global audience. We work to advance the use of quality information to improve public health programs worldwide.
The Measure DHS project, funded by USAID, is a five year project implemented by ICF Macro. The DHS program provides assistance to countries with the Demographic and Health Survey, the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) Survey, the HIV/AIDS Indicator Survey (AIS), Malaria Indicators Survey (MIS) and qualitative research. prjoect. Since October 2008, ICF Macro has partnered with five internationally experienced organizations CCP, PATH, The Futures Institute, CAMRIS Internatonal, and Blue Rastter to expand access to and use of the DHS data. CCP's role focuses largely on dissemination activites at both the country and global level.
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.
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.
CCP’s Global Program on Tobacco Control is funded in large part by the Bloomberg Initiative and works in partnership with the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, World Health Organization, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, CDC Foundation, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the World Lung Foundation. These organizations work together, along with in-country partners, to implement and coordinate activities to help stop the epidemic of tobacco use in middle and low-income countries where 80% of the world’s smokers live. As a member of the partnership, CCP is providing cross-cutting support to the Institute and other partners in the areas of knowledge management, strategic planning, and capacity building.
The Tuberculosis Control Program for the Central Asia Republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), was a five-year project funded by USAID to address Tuberculosis (TB) services. Led by Project Hope, the program was designed to strengthen political commitment and clinical capacity for universal awareness, availability and quality of TB services. CCP’s role was to provide training and technical assistance in communication strategy design, materials development, implementation, and project evaluation.
Voices for a Malaria-Free Future (Voices) is a pioneering malaria advocacy project operating in Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, the United States, and at the global partnership level. Funded by the Gates Foundation, Voices works to galvanize governments and partner organizations toward effective malaria control efforts and cultivate malaria champions around the world. Malaria endemic country advocacy emphasizes increased political will, improved policies, stronger management and coordination, while harmonizing with global malaria partnership-building and advocacy in the U.S. for increased malaria funding. Voices leads an integrated, international campaign of advocacy activities to incite and complement advances toward malaria eradication.
