TRAINING SESSION ON COMMUNICATION FOR BEHAVIORAL IMPACT UNDERWAY

January 08, 2007

For the next six days thirty Health Officials and Health Stakeholders will be taking part in a training session on Communication for Behavioral Impact. The session is being offered by the Ministry of Health and the National Committee for Families and Children. Maternal and Child Health Technical Advisor for the Ministry of Health, Natalia Largaspada says that a lot has been done in the area of communication in the field of health but indicators show it has not been effective.

Natalia Largaspada: Maternal and Child Health Technical Advisor

“We consider that this area is very important and right now it’s a good time to sit down a really and analyze what we are doing in terms of communications because a lot has been done  from different stakeholders towards changing and healthy lifestyle. But the indicators are saying that we are not too effective.”

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“Why do you see it important for this area to be developed?

Natalia Largaspada: Maternal and Child Health Technical Advisor

“Because many of the public health problems are affecting Belize like maternal mortality, sexual transmitted infections, HIV and ADIS, domestic violence and the immunization indicators also. All of them depend on the way how we as an individual protect ourselves or conduct ourselves in a healthy manner so as to reduce the incidence of these diseases that can be prevented in the majority of the cases.”

Conducting the training sessions is Doctor Everal Hosein Communication Advisor and Consultant with the World Health Organization. Hosein says the communication area in the field of health continues to be vital since the challenge continues to be that people will not take the necessary behavior to improve their health.

Doctor Everal Hosein: Communication Advisor and Consultant

“The communication area in the World Health Organization and in the Pan American Health Organization for this region is considered vital. We are not able to get people to under take the behaviors that would improve there health unless somebody engages them and communicate with them, the problem that we have had over the past couple years however is the communication work we have done. We have enable people to know what they should do, but we have not been able to encourage people to act on what they know, so the challenge we face is how do we go from knowing about HIV/AIDS and how we get HIV/AIDS to actually doing something about preventing ourselves from being infected, what we should do to have a healthy baby and protect our lives as a pregnant woman and actually doing something about it. This is a problem all over the world, in Africa, South Asia the Caribbean and Latin America and in Belize as we go to the opening of the workshop this morning and I would say the similar situation in a lot of the chronic diseases obesity, high blood pressure.”

So until Saturday, the participants will cover six main topics which include Communication and Behavioral Goals, Basic Communication Techniques, Marketing Principles and Practices for Integrated Marketing Communication, Marketing Research and Program Evaluation, Community Mobilization, Advertising and Public Relations and Integrated Marketing Communication class.They will also be trained in how to develop these area in there specific field of health service.

Doctor Everal Hosein: Communication Advisor and Consultant

“What we are going to do is to train them in how to develop what we call these COMBI plans. COMBI stands for Communication for Behavioral Impact and we will be training the thirty people to understand what needs to be done in terms of public communication beyond just giving information, how do we encourage people to act. Among the group of thirty people we will be breaking them up into five groups and each group will develop a communication plan of their particular health areas some of it will be chronic diseases, some of it will be HIV/AIDS maternal mortality, cervical cancer and so fort. And then each of these COMBI plans we hope that the Ministry of Health will find the resources to implement them over the long term.”

The training sessions is also aimed at responding to the number of maternal mortalities in the country as part of the millennium development goals.This according to the Ministry of Health is a public health problem that has a negative consequence on families, communities and the country on a whole; the most affected being children and adolescents.

Natalia Largaspada: Maternal and Child Health Technical Advisor

“We know that we have a problem with maternal mortality our ratio is pretty high and so this workshop is being sponsored through a programme that exist to reduce maternal mortality. That is why we are focusing on maternal mortality but the interested part of the workshop is that this communication technique that people will learn can apply to any other programme not necessarily maternal mortality. One of the expected results at the end of the workshop is to have communication for behavioral impact plan, one plan to work reducing maternal mortality another plan towards reducing STDs, HIV/AIDS, immunization services, domestic violence and those plans will be ready and people can start implementing them immediately.So it’s not just a workshop it’s a learning process because at the end Belize will have plans in these specific areas that we are targeting.”

Natalia Largaspada, Maternal and Child Health Technical Advisor for the Ministry of Health.The training session ends on Saturday. 

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