The Drum Beat 437 - Communication and Change News and Issues
This issue of The Drum Beat features a small selection of summaries available on The Communication Initiative website from 3 of our knowledge sections - Strategic Thinking, Trends, and Materials - which illustrate how communication and media are contributing to positive development action, around the world.
Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Contact Deborah Heimann at [email protected]
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1.Improving Nutrition for People Living with HIV/AIDS: The Contribution of an Electronic Discussion Forum
This report explores the strategy of using an electronic forum ("e-forum") as a channel for sharing information and insights from efforts to assess the impact and value of the ProNut-HIV Forum, an e-forum sharing guidelines, facts, and experience in the field of nutrition and HIV/AIDS with, and among, a diverse group of subscribers. As detailed here, ProNut-HIV focuses on nutritional care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and is intended to be an information resource that provides a platform for the exchange of current, relevant, and practical knowledge and tools for decision-making. The goal is to enhance positive living by promoting constructive dialogue between PLWHA, front-line workers, researchers, HIV/AIDS specialists, programme managers, and policymakers. On the whole, the evaluation process revealed that ProNut-HIV is "a vibrant, participatory tool". Detailed data are shared in the report; one selected finding to emerge is that 43% said they had actively shared information or ideas via the forum. In addition, the evaluation found that participants seem to be sharing the information they glean from the e-forum with their co-workers.
2.A Classroom-Administered Simulation of a Television Campaign on Adolescent Smoking: Testing an Activation Model of Information Exposure
by Donald W. Helme, Robert Lewis Donohew, Monika Baier, and Linda Zittleman
Published in the Journal of Health Communication, this article reports research from a study of a particular communication strategy for addressing the problem of adolescent tobacco use: the use of media interventions that include high sensation-related elements to attract, hold the attention of, and persuade higher risk takers to avoid or delay the unhealthy behaviour. The article examines the premise that the research on televised anti-drug public service announcement (PSA) campaigns based on the sensory, affective, and arousal needs of high sensation-seeking (HSS) adolescents can be applied to youth tobacco prevention to produce media messages that achieve significant changes in tobacco-related attitudes, intentions, and behaviours. The high sensation-related components of the media being studied are described as evoking sensory, affective, and arousal responses among HSS by combining strong sound and visual effects, including suspenseful or intense music, multiple cuts and edits, unusual lighting and camera angles, zooms, and close-ups. In essence, these components are designed to make the media more "intense" and "exciting."
3.Success Stories in Indigenous Health: A Showcase of Successful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Projects
This publication from Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) describes fifteen projects, clinics, and scholarship programmes that are designed to close the healthcare gap between the 3 percent population of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders and the remaining 97 percent of the Australian public. The work of these organisations supports ANTaR's action plan, including delivering healthy lifestyle programmes and removing barriers to obtaining healthy food, which can cost up to 180 percent more in remote areas.
4.Taking Community Empowerment to Scale: Lessons from Three Successful Experiences
by Gail Snetro-Plewman, Marcela Tapia, Valerie Uccellani, Angela Brasington, and Maureen McNulty
From Health Communication Insights of the Health Communication Partnership based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs, this document describes three U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded programmes that used community empowering approaches to achieve public health impact at scale in three different settings - Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It also identifies the success factors common to all three programmes. The first case study in the Philippines used an approach known as Appreciative Community Mobilisation (ACM) - combining community mobilisation (CM) capacity building and appreciative inquiry (AI), a process of building on an organisation’s strengths - to go to scale to effect change in family planning, child survival, and environmental conservation. The second case study, Arab Women Speak Out (AWSO), sought to empower women throughout the Arab world to achieve their potential inside as well as outside the home. The third case, the Madagascar Child Survival and Reproductive Health Program, focuses specifically on how the project’s community and communication components led to community-based work on a large scale.
5.Haringey Invites Young People to Text in Crimes in Confidence
by Alison Bennett
According to this article, young people on the Campsbourne Estate, in Haringey, London, United Kingdom (UK), are being encouraged to use MSN, texts, email, or phone to secretly report any trouble they witness or fear on the estate. The pilot initiative of Haringey's Anti-Social Behaviour Action Team intends to connect with young people through a medium with which they feel comfortable to report antisocial behaviour discreetly and without fear of recrimination.
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6.Internet Use among Ugandan Adolescents: Implications for HIV Intervention
by Michele L. Ybarra, Julius Kiwanuka, Nneka Emenyonu and David R. Bangsberg
This article details the results of The Uganda Media and You Survey, a cross-sectional survey of internet use among adolescents (ages 12-18 years) in Mbarara, Uganda. The research was carried out in response to the observation that - while the internet has a number of characteristics that make it an attractive tool in health education and HIV prevention, especially for adolescents (e.g., interactivity, privacy, the overlap between education and play, and the ability to individualise information) - the internet's potential in resource-poor settings with higher HIV infection rates and limited access to other health care resources has not been explored. According to the survey, the most commonly reported barriers to internet use are expense (43% [118]), not knowing where to access the internet (39% [107]), and not knowing how to use the internet (36% [101]). If internet access were free, 66% (330) reported that they would search for information about HIV/AIDS prevention online.
7.Nonprofit Journalism on the Rise
by Randy Dotinga
This article claims that at a time of lay-offs and budget cuts at traditional United States newspapers, foundations and donors are funding new journalism ventures. As stated in the article, while commercial newspapers are reducing staff and newspapers' physical size, some small nonprofit newspapers both online and in print format, funded largely by foundations and individual donors, are increasing in staff size and readership. The executive director of a San Diego paper claims the reason is that these publications fill a gap in news coverage. His publication focuses on housing, growth, and politics, which he feels are "what people need to know the most." Though readership is 17,000 daily, compared to the 1.2 million monthly readers of the larger for-profit competitor, there is sufficient donor support to hire young investigative reporters, who attract readers through their "watchdog" work on a city-wide level.
8.Broadband Revolutionizes Education on Remote Maldives Atolls
Maldives has recently launched 20 broadband-enabled, child-friendly learning centres, which link 20 of the country's islands. Supported by the United Nation's Children Fund (UNICEF), the connected Teacher Resource Centres (TRCs) were established to create a virtual learning environment accessible throughout the Maldives. The TRCs are designed to alleviate the logistical problems of teacher training in Maldives (a country of 1,200 small islands – 200 of which are inhabited); up to 80 per cent of teacher-training costs are related to transportation. Teachers and children can connect to the internet and use a 'smart board' (a touch-sensitive "black- or white-board" sized screen on which a computer screen display is projected and which has points that can change computer function with a tap of the finger).
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9.Health Communication: From Theory to Practice
by Renata Schiavo
This is a book for students, public health practitioners, healthcare providers, and other professionals with an interest in health communication. Step by step, the book outlines the theory, practice, and key action areas of health communication and offers detailed instructions on how to design, implement, and evaluate health communication interventions that would affect health and social behaviour and ultimately help improve public health outcomes.
10.Global Information Society Watch 2007 Report
This Report is the first in a series of yearly reports covering the state of the so-called "information society" from the perspectives of civil society and stakeholders in the global South. The publishers are motivated by the belief that it is essential for civil society networks to participate in and watch over information and communication technology (ICT) policy processes at the global, regional, and national levels. In short, "Global Information Society Watch" aims to survey the state of the field of ICT policy at the local and global levels; encourage critical debate; and strengthen networking and advocacy for a just, inclusive information society.
11.Understanding and Challenging HIV Stigma: Toolkit for Action
by Ross Kidd, Sue Clay, Chipo Chiiya, and Mutale Chonta
This toolkit originally evolved out of a two-year research project on stigma conducted in Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia and was originally published in 2003. The 2007 version of the toolkit contains over 100 participatory exercises which can be adapted to fit different groups and contexts. There are different sets of pictures which can help to identify stigma, discuss the rights of positive people and help to stimulate discussions around gender and sexuality and morality issues linked to stigma. The toolkit was developed with the involvement of staff from more than 50 non-governmental (NGOs) from these countries. They shared stories and their experiences, developed exercises, and tested some of the tools.
12.Getting on Message: Making the Biodiversity-Sprawl Connection
by Karen Bassler
From the introduction: "This message kit for non-profit organisations is a resource for outreach on issues related to biodiversity and sprawl. The kit contains two sections: fact sheets that include information about biodiversity and how it relates to sprawl, and a section of communications tips and specific recommendations for talking about sprawl and related issues. The fact sheets are designed to stand alone, so that they can be copied and given to journalists, public leaders and other interested parties for concise background information on biodiversity and sprawl. The communications sheets are designed for internal use by smart growth advocates, to help... develop and refine more effective and powerful communications strategies and messages." The kit also contains some sample print advertisements and logos for adaptation by to the needs of advocates.
13.Access to Information: the Key to an Open Society
by Ben Irwin
This paper highlights three pieces of legislation and provides an analysis of their strengths and shortcomings, as compared to best international practice. The current situation in countries that have been slow to legally recognise access to information, i.e., Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Botswana and Zambia, is discussed. The paper also highlights challenges that still exist in the region concerning access to information legislation and critiques the legislation and draft bill that currently exists and provides a framework for ongoing development in this essential area of law.
14.Physicians for Human Rights Advocacy Toolkit
This toolkit describes advocacy techniques and activities geared toward the health professions and health professional students. It aims to support health professionals to advocate for human rights by accessing "their specialized skills, ethical obligations, and credible voices". For students, the website strives to advance understanding and lifelong investment in health and human rights activism, and to cultivate their contributions as advocates promoting health and human rights through local chapters of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), as well as blog posting, action alerts, and campaign organising. The advocacy toolkit includes such aids as templates, phone scripts, sample letters, and other downloadable tools.
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Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann [email protected]
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