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Maria Elena Figueroa - Sunday 21 May 2006Hi all, greetings from Baltimore.
It has been quite a learning experience to join this e-conference. I add my congratulations to the organizers and Susan Murcott for making this possible.
My name is Maria Elena and I am at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs in Baltimore. The Center where I work has a long history (20+ years) helping develop and implementing communication programs to support health initiatives in the developing world. Over the Center’s lifetime we have learned that human action is influenced by factors related to many different levels of the social system where individuals live. In particular we have learned that communication can be designed to encourage and support healthy behaviors by working at those many levels of society, including enabling the socio-political environment, increasing interaction with the health care delivery system and schools, enhancing healthy community norms and increasing the ability of families and individuals to take positive health actions.
Per Renuka’s question about what have we learned from this e-conference? As I read the many experiences that are being shared from implementing HWTS programs in the field I have learned that there are great opportunities out there for communication to help “multiply” and really “bring up to scale” the several efforts and approaches that you all have described, including the door-to-door approach, which by the way, it is not an old-fashioned approach, as Matthias labeled it, but the opposite, “interpersonal communication” is at the core of community dialogue and action for change. There are many ways in which communication can help do this and I am not dissociating here the mass media from interpersonal approaches, they actually go together.
Reid Harvey asked how are the technologies of HWTS compared with each other?
I don’t know how those in one side of the equation (those developing technologies) would answer this, but I can tell that those in the other side of the equation, “the potential users”, have a range of attributes that they bring into their minds and hearts when comparing technologies. In a study in Guatemala where the product PuR (P&G) was introduced we assessed these attributes in a household survey. The results of a multidimensional scaling analysis showed that mothers did not associate PuR with chlorine, rather PuR fell in between chlorine and the five gallon water bottle, called “garrafón” in Spanish. Chlorine was associated with “easy to use” and PuR was associated with “clarity of water” but not with easy.
Other findings in regard to communication have already been posted by Michael Lea and refer to our work in Pakistan with HOPE Pakistan (Mubina Agboatwalla). We found that “positive” (rather than “negative”) attitudes such as confidence than one can treat drinking water at home and that one can find the time to do so, were better predictors of whether people were likely to adopt and sustain water treatment practices. This matches as well what Sid Shrestha suggests of using positive messages, such as emphasize “staying healthy” rather than “preventing disease”.
Jaap Pels asked how to convince donors, governments and the private sector to finance opportunities for knowledge sharing, and asks for hints.
One way may be to ask that donors finance the knowledge sharing site of the International Network for Household Water Treatment (if Bruce approves). This is a cost-effective way of targeting funds while knowing that many will benefit from that investment. One of the goals of the Network is to provide increased access and sharing of this type of knowledge, but funds are always scarce. If the Network is provided with some type of funding to support this knowledge management operation, and key contributors, this will help and expedite getting information out for people to use it.
By the way, also many thanks to Jaap for “operating so efficiently behind the scenes”
From the point above, also a request to Dan Campbell to please add the Center for Communication Programs website to his list of Links to Point-of-Use Web Sites. CCP is also a member of the Network and the link is www.jhuccp.org
We are currently reorganizing the webpage to better highlight the water and hygiene activities and communication materials that we have available. For those intereste, going down the page you will find the Media Materials Clearinghouse labeled MMC that has a compilation of communication materials from all over the world related to health. I invite you all to contribute your materials to the MMC (look for instructions in the webpage) which can later be linked to the Network webpage for easier access.
Thanks again for the opportunity,
- Maria Elena