The INFO Project Blog

The INFO Project is headquartered in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (CCP). Along with a mouthful of a name, our location within CCP makes us privvy to the latest news about highly effective health communication activities around the world. Recently, we learned about some comprehensive health analysis being dispatched in Pakistan’s English-language International News.

Working as Deputy Team Leader with the CCP Pakistan team, Dr. Zaeem ul Haq’s current professional focus is maternal and newborn health. He also advises the National Programme of Family Planning and Primary Health Care in 132 districts around the country, and is designing a mass media campaign with this program.

In his spare time–one wonders how there is any–Dr. ul Haq has been writing a series of editorials that connect behavior change communication (BCC) theory and maternal and child health with issues like global warming, famine and HIV. In a March appeal for  improving the country’s health facilities and training of birth attendants (Lights, camera, action: for a cause), he writes,

Today, Pakistani mothers and infants are facing a situation worse than the Ethiopian famine [of the mid 1980s]. A mother dies every 20 minutes while in pregnancy or while giving birth to her child in Pakistan. Similarly, a child less than a year dies every two or three minutes in the country. This is a ’story’ much bigger than the African famine, because it has been happening for decades as opposed to the famine that spanned a few years only.

In an April editorial, Dr. ul Haq highlights Pakistan’s acute vulnerability to environmental problems, writing that that “infective diarrhea and dysentary [will] likely increase further as a result of… climate change.” Already one of the three most common diseases among children aged less than five, diarrhea’s impact on children in this region could worsen with growing temperatures, water stagnation, especially in light of poor existing santitation and waste disposal. But instead of pointing fingers, the health communication specialist has a simple, relatable suggestion for policymarkers: he writes that the “small step of promoting exclusive breast-feeding can go a long way.” Read the rest of this entry »

Child Lives: Stolen Lives, the NOW on PBS program that screened at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in January, has received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best TV interpretation or documentary on international affairs from the Overseas Press Club (OPC). 

At the panel discussion following the Hopkins screening, journalist Maria Hinojosa discussed the media’s role in exposing under-reported stories affecting women and girls around the world, like child marriage. She said,

The issue of child marriage gets glossed over… But this practice sets [girls] off for life impoverished, disempowered, and at risk for all these health issues.

Read more about the panel, organized with ICRW and featuring additional child marriage experts from Hopkins, the Population Council, and TOSTAN, at INFO’s press archive.

All the winners of the OPC’s Edward Murrow awards are listed on their site.

Listen to Maria Hinojosa speak with broadcast news reporter Marc Steiner about the serious health consequences of child marriage.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jane Bertrand about building monitoring and evaluation into family planning programs. Dr. Bertrand, who is the director of the Center for Communication Programs, home of the INFO Project, pointed to Colombia’s pioneering PROFAMILIA family planning program, an IPPF affiliate that is the largest not-for-profit FP provider in the country.

In terms of organizations that have done M&E well, let me go back to a pioneer in this area, PROFAMILIA in Colombia in the 60s and 70s. They were way ahead of the competition, and their executive director, Miguel Trias, said at one point, “A day without data is like a minute without oxygen.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Umniah, one of Jordan’s largest mobile phone companies, has signed a Letter of Agreement with the Jordan Health Communication Partnership (JHCP) to support and spread the messages national family planning campaign (Hayati Ahla”- My Life is More Beautiful). Umniah will send health awareness SMS messages to all Umniah subscribers (addressing a number of health issues, includin reproductive and sexual health), free of cost, which will reach a total of 300,000 people. Umniah will also be distributing JHCP health education materials at point of sales and include birth spacing and small family size related messages on their pre-paid cards, reaching over 1.3 million subscribers.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent interview about the Elements of Family Planning Success, Dr. Alan Bornbusch gives examples of national contraceptive success stories in countries including Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Dr. Bornbusch, a Public Health Adviser in USAID/Washington’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, explains the role of the supply chains and gives strategies for averting bottlenecks (supply choke points) in national contraceptive provision programs.

Zimbabwe has an innovative system that Dr. Bornbusch describes in this video. Trucks come to clinics each month with laptops to work with contraceptive supply managers to determine what supply should be for that month. Then, the supply is “topped up” to carry them through the next month.

Read the transcript of his entire interview, then tell us what you think.