Development action with informed and engaged societies

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Vaccination Demand Hub

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"Fostering evidence-based and data-driven approaches for increasing demand..."

The Vaccination Demand Hub is a global network of partner organisations working together to understand why people miss out on vaccination, to improve acceptance and uptake of vaccines, and to ensure that people everywhere are protected against vaccine-preventable diseases. Co-chaired by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Vaccination Demand Hub was created in 2018 by a group of multilaterals, global partnerships, donors, and non-governmental and civil society organisations.

Communication Strategies

Through online and in-person knowledge exchange and action, the Vaccination Demand Hub works to foster evidence-based and data-driven approaches for increasing demand for immunisation among regions and countries, including by:

  • Regularly hosting events and trainings to highlight best practices, innovation, and leadership of global vaccination efforts. For example, in the summer of 2022, the Demand Hub held a training programme to address the issue of heterogeneous demand expertise at the country level and build a cadre of country demand experts at scale. The 4-week intensive training drew a cohort of approximately 600 participants from 92 countries, with a curriculum based on an interactive learning paedagogy consisting of lectures, simulation exercises, and peer-to-peer engagement.
  • Providing technical guidance and thought leadership to regions and countries to build public trust and confidence in vaccination. This work also takes place on a global scale: The Hub contributed to the development of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), which sets an ambitious, overarching global vision and strategy for vaccines and immunisation for the decade 2021-2030. The focus of the Hub's contribution was on the objectives for strategic priority 2 (commitment and demand).
  • Developing and curating a knowledge base of resources from organisations and experts across many disciplines.

The network leverages behavioural and social sciences in its 4 workflows:

  1. Behavioral and Social Drivers (BeSD) of Vaccination - Through this workstream, a working group established a new framework for BeSD of vaccination with four domains: thinking and feeling, social processes, motivation, and practical issues. The full range of outputs of the BeSD working group (evidence reviews and findings from the field testing and validation of tools) were presented to the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization (SAGE) at its meeting in October 2021. (See Related Summaries, below.)
  2. Behaviorally Informed Interventions - This workstream supports the testing, implementation, scale-up, and evaluation of promising and evidence-based, behaviourally informed interventions for immunisation and provides guidance and resources to assist immunisation programmes and partners.
  3. Digital Information Environment - This workstream brings together various global organisations and institutions, experts, practitioners, academia, and civil society organisations to develop and share tools and approaches that are designed to address misinformation and strengthen digital engagement. A compilation of tools explore establishment of social listening systems and dashboards; specific capacity-building tools are available for social analysts/infodemic managers at the country level.
  4. Service Experience - This workstream aims to inform a new direction in people-centred quality immunisation service delivery by incorporating human-centred design principles to re-orient immunisation service delivery to include caregiver and client perspectives and needs. Among its products is the toolkit available at Related Summaries, below.

In mid-2020, a sub-group of the Demand Hub was formed to focus on demand for COVID-19 vaccination. They rapidly developed and disseminated multiple tools and guidance to assist programmes and partners. The same group has since supported various technical activities, including providing inputs in developing guidance for national vaccine deployment plans and coordinating and contributing specialist technical assistance to regions and countries seeking to foster high uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.

Development Issues

Immunisation and Vaccines

Sources

Vaccination Demand Hub, November 4 2022. Image credit: Gavi