The theoretical assessments were performed using a workplace-based ICT tool (computer) that consisted of 8 learning objectives: "Health", "Communications", "Oral care", "Ergonomics, hygiene, esthetic, environmental", "Rehabilitation", "Assistive technology", "Basic health care", and "Law and organization".
The role of female partners also offers potential; women at the trial sites were keen for their partners to become circumcised (for reasons of health and hygiene), and targeting communications to women may be an effective way to reach reluctant men.
UNICEF is delivering a comprehensive and integrated response including water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health, nutrition and communications for development (C4D) interventions.
UNICEF is also deploying professionals from its nutrition, child protection and communications programmes, and from its water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme.
Vanuatu, for example, is aligning and integrating their climate change agenda and their water, sanitation, and hygiene strategies into programmatic activities across departments, such as communications and education, and the National Health Disaster Plan [ 29].
We would like to thank Rebecca Tremain at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for coordinating the distribution of the questionnaires and communications with panellists.
The survey collected cross-sectional data on household demographics, communications preferences, knowledge of cholera transmission and prevention, water sources and treatment, and hygiene practices.
The Department of Health, with support from UNICEF and CHSI, launched the initial rollout of a new communications campaign (Goodbye Dumi, Hello Healthy) to strengthen the use of improved sanitation and hygiene practices, in selected regions.
Innovative communications not only play a critical role in building awareness of global health and hygiene challenges, but they are instrumental in driving transformational change for those plagued by inequities of current health systems.
For example, when the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, initiated meningococcal carriage studies in Africa, communications plans were collaboratively developed to explain research activities that local populations might have considered intrusive (eg, collecting oropharyngeal swabs).
