Capacity Strengthening During the Zika Outbreak Response: Empowering Communities to Fight Zika

This success story outlines the role of Breakthrough ACTION’s capacity strengthening activities as well as the importance of enhancing interpersonal communication skills of frontline workers to improve household uptake of Zika prevention behaviors.

Household visits by frontline community workers were a cornerstone activity in the USAID-funded Zika response, which provided a unique communication opportunity between families and community workers. This document also highlights several useful resources created under the Breakthrough ACTION project, including a job aid to support frontline workers, a training of trainers guide on interpersonal successes, and lessons learned for USAID and partners in future outbreak responses.

Source: Breakthrough ACTION/Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: April 13, 2020

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Evidence-Based Prioritization Process to Identify Behaviors for Zika Prevention

This peer-reviewed publication documents the evidence-based behavior prioritization process during the 2015 Zika outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The process included identifying behaviors with the highest potential to reduce Zika infection and transmission and developing assessment criteria to delineate the ease with which the target population could adopt each behavior. Program implementers can use this document to inform future social and behavior change (SBC) programming during public health emergencies, especially when limited evidence is available.

Source: Breakthrough ACTION/Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: April 13, 2020

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Health Communication Message Guide

This guide serves as a reference for health communication interventions, by providing a set of core messages that are accurate and consistent. It enable practitioners to communicate standardized messages to communities and audiences.

Different guides are available for different health areas including Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH); Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH); Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD); Malaria and TB. The Federal Ministry of Health and Regional Health Bureaus have endorsed the guides.

Source: Communication for Health Ethiopia

Date of Publication: February 6, 2020

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Social Mobilization Action Learning Centers

This is a summary of social mobilization activities through Action Learning Centers and school-led events such as Health Service Booths and Entertainment for Adults and Children.

Source: Communication for Health Ethiopia

Date of Publication: February 6, 2020

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Capacity Strengthening Fact Sheet

This is a brief on how the Communication for Health project takes a holistic approach to SBCC capacity strengthening. It includes training, technical assistance, development of strategies and activities to support the national SBCC community.

Source: Communication for Health Ethiopia

Date of Publication: February 6, 2020

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Message Harmonization Fact Sheet

This brief summarizes how health messages were harmonized in the Ethiopia Communication for Health project. It is a tool that was used to help health providers, program implementers, media professionals, and other stakeholders to effectively communicate with their audiences for a better public health outcome.

Source: Communication for Health Ethiopia

Date of Publication: February 6, 2020

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Capacity Building in Social and Behavior Change Communication Focus on People, Focus on Organization, Focus on Collaboration

The Communicate for Health Ghana Project (2014-2019) had as one of its goals capacity strengthening in social and behavior change. This brief explains how this was done within the Health Promotion Department of the Ghana Health Service.

Source: Communicate for Health Ghana

Date of Publication: January 28, 2020

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Success Story: Media Development and Capacity Building in Action

The Ghana Communicate for Health Project ran from 2015-2019. As part of its efforts to address regional perspectives and needs, Communicate for Health conducted two collaborative workshops to discuss region-specific audience research and design creative materials that would address identified social and behavioral barriers and benefits in key health areas.

Both workshops engaged multiple private sector design partners, regional health promotion officers (RHPOs), technical focal persons for malaria and nutrition, representatives of local media houses, USAID implementing partners (IPs), and other regional stakeholders to produce GoodLife materials for their areas of the country.

Both workshops featured intensive SBCC capacity building experiences for participants while strengthening networks for sustainable regional collaboration.

In an evaluation of the workshop process and outcomes, participants gave the overall experience a score of 8.3 out of a possible 10 points, indicating a high level of learning and satisfaction. Some said the workshop was the first time they had the opportunity to work on each step of material development—from a creative brief to actual production. Many appreciated the opportunity to review audience research for their particular areas.

Source: Communicate for Health Ghana

Date of Publication: January 28, 2020

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The Change Challenge Fund: Learning by Leading

This activity was part of the Communicate for Health Ghana project, 2015-2019. Learning by Leading was the underlying principle of Communicate for Health’s capacity building strategy. Among the four components of this strategy, the project’s Change Challenge Fund translated this principle into practice in the boldest and most sustained way.

The Change Challenge Fund, or CCF, was specifically designed for those who had already successfully completed at least one other skills-building component: the Change Agent Development Program (CADP) or the Set for Change Action Learning Set (SfC).

Like these other programs, the CCF was competitive. But unlike them, the CCF asked applicants to write a formal proposal for funding— just as they would submit to a client or donor— outlining a specific health problem, a target area, an implementation strategy including partners, and a budget. Those awarded grants would then have the opportunity to put all their newly developed skills into practice, carrying out a small-scale SBCC project over a seven to ten-month period in the area where they worked on a topic that concerned them personally, and supporting the GoodLife objectives.

Source: Communicate for Health Ghana

Date of Publication: January 28, 2020

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Can Mobile Phone Surveys Replace House-To-House Data Collection?

This brief describes an effort to use interactive voice recognition to assess media exposure and behaviors in Ghana.

Communicate for Health and Viamo developed a survey design with three major objectives:

Assess trends in exposure to health communication messages among the project’s three Life Stage audiences
Assess trends in behavioral determinants and behaviors
Evaluate the feasibility and of collecting project monitoring and evaluation data via mobile phone

Communicate for Health found that mobile phone surveys using IVR random digit dial sampling is an alternative or supplemental data collection method for social and behavior change monitoring in low resource settings. In Ghana, Communicate for Health found that the methodology is suitable for reaching populations with high access to mobile phones, especially people 35 and younger, from urban or peri-urban areas, and males.

More Breakthrough ACTION and RESEARCH Resources on Zika Resources

Capacity Strengthening During the Zika Outbreak Response: Empowering Communities to Fight Zika

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More Breakthrough ACTION and RESEARCH Resources on Zika Resources

Evidence-Based Prioritization Process to Identify Behaviors for Zika Prevention

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Health Communication Message Guide

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Social Mobilization Action Learning Centers

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Capacity Strengthening Fact Sheet

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Message Harmonization Fact Sheet

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Capacity Building in Social and Behavior Change Communication Focus on People, Focus on Organization, Focus on Collaboration

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