A Global Communication Strategy Development Guide for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health

A Global Communication Strategy Development Guide for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Programs

An Overview

Despite an established evidence base of simple, affordable, and low-cost interventions to avert maternal, newborn and child deaths and improve survival rates, global progress in reducing such mortality has stagnated in recent years. In June 2012, the Governments of Ethiopia, India and the United States, in collaboration with UNICEF, convened over 700 government, civil society and private sector participants from more than 80 countries to renew the global commitment to child survival. The Call to Action at this summit provided evidence that all countries can lower child mortality rates to 20 or fewer deaths per 1,000 live births by 2035 by intensifying efforts to reach the most underserved population groups (A Promise Renewed).More than ninety governments and many dozens of non-governmental organizations signed a pledge vowing to strengthen their efforts to improve maternal, newborn and child survival by focusing on the hardest-to-reach children in every country.

Communication strategies to increase knowledge, and to change attitudes, behaviors, and social norms at the individual, community, and societal levels are essential to decreasing the risk and incidence of, and mortality due to, maternal and childhood causes. Development efforts of the past decade focused on individual- and household- level behavior change in specific populations, using strategies that produced small-scale, fragmented, short-term behavior changes. The emphasis of child survival development programs was on supplying information about wellness and life-saving practices(e.g., exclusive breastfeeding, resuscitation, care-seeking), biomedical interventions (e.g., vaccines, antibiotics), treatments (e.g., ORS, zinc supplements, water purification solutions), and/or technological innovations (e.g., VIP latrines), without much attention to creating demand for the interventions using evidence-based communication strategies (Applied Communication for Development Strategies for Newborn Care and the Prevention and Control of Childhood Pneumonia and Diarrhoea).

Purpose for this Guide

Growing evidence shows that strategic communication can influence health behaviors and change health-related social norms. It is important to create an environment that encourages individuals, families, and communities to act positively for their health and to advocate for, and access, quality health services. The purpose for this Global Communication Strategy Development Guide for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health is to provide evidence-based, practical guidance for designing communication for development (C4D) strategic program plans whose implementation will result in direct positive changes in MNCH indicators and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2015 and beyond, as well as UNICEF’s A Promise Renewed a vision of ending preventable child deaths by 2035.

Users of this Guide

The primary users of this Guide will be program managers, program planners, and communication specialists that work in the area of MNCH and have some background in MNCH and communication for development approaches. Program managers and program planners should use the Guide to ensure that their MNCH programs use various communication approaches to strategically address the necessary levels of the social ecological model and eliminate bottlenecks that may impede progress toward the development goals. This Guide can also be used to build capacity among partner agencies toward improving child survival program planning, implementation, monitoring and outcomes. The principles presented in this Guide can be used to develop strategic communication programs for different areas of public health and geographical regions.

Scope of this Guide

This Guide is designed to assist program managers and program planners to determine the behavioral, social and communication context for MNCH C4D programs and to follow strategic program planning steps for evidence-based, equity-focused, multi-level, culturally- and population- appropriate, coordinated communication activities. The focus is on shifting the C4D paradigm from programs that mainly address change at the individual and/or household levels, to a more holistic assessment and engagement with the environment and social system.

The 5-stepplanning process used in this Guide is an adaptation of existing evidence-based program planning models. Each of the steps in the process is explained in the context of C4D. All the steps for strategy development in this guide are meant to be participatory and capacity building, that is, to include a variety of stakeholders, program staff, local organizations, and community members as partners in the design process.

The Guide incorporates United Nations (UN) core programming principles, for example, Results-Based Management (an approach to measuring program outputs, outcomes, and impacts that are MDG-related priorities) and is aligned with the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2014-2017 that refocuses on equity for children’s rights and aims to accelerate efforts to achieve the MDGs and strengthen institutional capacities of most governments (UNICEF Strategic Plan 2014-2017).

The five results (outcomes) areas highlighted for MNCH C4D strategic planning include (1) health, (2) HIV and AIDS, (3) water, sanitation, and hygiene, (4) nutrition, and (5) social inclusion (The Five Results Areas for MNCH).

Five cross cutting areas address using C4D are included in this Guide as they related to MNCH: (1) Gender, (2) human rights, (3) disability, (4) adolescents, and (5) stigma and discrimination (The Five Cross-Cutting Areas Addressed Using C4D for MNCH).

Content of this Guide

This Guide is divided into Modules. Module 1 provides a description of the Social Ecological Model (SEM) and communication for development (C4D), and the importance of social norms. Module 2, presents the 5-stepevidence-based model for developing a strategic plan for MNCH or any program area. Module 3shows how to use the model to develop a strategic plan for MNCH programs. Each Module includes hyperlinks to documents that provide further information, examples and/or references.