My top 10 communications stories in global health and poverty in 2012

Melinda Gates, Andrew Mitchell and three African heads of state welcome British Prime Minister David Cameron to the podium of the London Family Planning Summit.

This piece was originally published on the Impatient Optimists blog on Dec. 21, 2012.
 
In 2012, global development communication trends continued as in recent years: Non-profits increased their reliance on social media, decreased it on traditional media and looked for creative ways to call attention to their issues, change policy and raise money. Several global events provided unique opportunities to cast a spotlight on food security, family planning, and AIDS.

As a global development communicator, I track trends in development communication. For the last two years I have shared my personal, subjective take on what I consider the top global development communication stories of the year. Here’s my take on 2012, in no particular order:

In Alsace, land of my ancestors, people still live off the land to surprising degree

This was originally published on The Huffington Post on Nov. 13, 2012.
 

Germaine cooking in her kitchen

HOUSSEN, Alsace, France -- Here in the village from where my great-great grandparents emigrated to America, in the former province known as Alsace, those who derive their living from the land are now a fraction of what they were at the time my ancestors left in 1872. But many, including the Eckerlens, my modern-day relatives that I know best, still live off the land to a surprising degree -- especially in the late summer and early fall.

During a visit here in September, I had a dinner and two lunches at the home of Germaine Eckerlen who lives in the village of Houssen, where my great grandfather Eugene was born in 1867. And yet everything, or nearly everything, I ate came directly from her backyard in the village. Germaine, 80 years old, is the widow of my father's third cousin. She treats me like a long-lost relative which, in fact, I am: I only discovered this village in 2000 after many years of genealogical research.

Using technology to talk to Ethiopian university students about HIV

The home page of Temarinet.com.

This article originally appeared on The ONE Blog on Oct. 26, 2012.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The most dramatic demographic divergence in Ethiopia in recent years has been an explosion in the number of young adults enrolled in post-secondary education. Ten years ago, there were 15,000. In 2012, that has risen to 380,000 students attending state universities — a 25-fold increase. Most of them moved out of their family homes and also from the protective shields of their parents, with all the implications that has for their sexual and reproductive health.

To reach them in the most effective way with information about protecting themselves from HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections, health programs in Africa are increasingly turning to technology — digital, mobile and social. In Ethiopia, for example, DKT Ethiopia, an affiliate of the non-profit organization DKT International, launched the Higher Education Initiative in 2009 in an effort to get on top of this demographic trend and the potential negative health consequences it portends.

Kenyans struggle to come to terms with abortion and its impact on maternal health

This was originally published on The Huffington Post on Oct. 17, 2012.
 
NAIROBI, Kenya -- The abortion issue in Kenya is raucous, rancorous and highly emotional and political, just like in the U.S., but there is one major difference: In Kenya, abortion rights have been liberalized in certain cases in a Constitution approved in a public referendum two years ago.

I spent four weeks in Kenya this year working with the Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance, a coalition of six Kenyan organizations committed to improving maternal health, to communicate better to key groups the nature of those changes. I talked to some 40 doctors, gynecologists, nurses, lawyers, government bureaucrats and technocrats and non-governmental workers and journalists. And a few taxi drivers.

The issue of abortion is so sensitive and taboo in Kenya that it almost derailed the constitution-making process. I discovered that even though the debate was heavily covered by the Kenyan media leading up to the August 2010 referendum, there's still a lot of misinformation on what exactly the Constitution changed, or didn't change -- even among health providers. Some think the Constitution legalized abortion on demand. Others think it changed nothing and abortion remains virtually illegal. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Using sexiness to stop unsafe sex

Sexy condom ads like this helped DKT increase condom sales in Brazil.

This article was published originally by Fast Company's Co.EXIST blog on October 5, 2012.

Sex and sexuality have long been used to market a variety of consumer products in wealthy countries. But when it comes to HIV prevention and family planning in developing countries, global health practitioners have mostly shied away from using the titillating strategies so effective in the commercial world.

The Pleasure Project and a small group of like-minded nonprofit partners are trying to change that, by shaking up an international reproductive health community that tries to promote safer sexual behavior by influencing the most intimate aspects of the lives of people in developing countries. With their motto, “Putting the sexy back into safer sex,” the Pleasure Project is spreading that message far and wide. At the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., this summer, they held a session entitled “Pleasure at AIDS 2012: Everything You Wanted to Know About Pleasurable Safer Sex but Were Afraid to Ask” that explored whether pleasure and eroticism can be harnessed to enhance HIV prevention. The conclusion was that they can indeed, even though most campaigns don’t even try.

Faith-based organizations believe in family planning

British Prime Minister David Cameron speaking at the London Summit.

This article was originally published on Impatient Optimists on July 19, 2012.
 
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) were well represented at last week’s London Summit on Family Planning thanks to the summit organizers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the British government. Ten faith leaders participated and, like most of the delegates, they thought the summit was a smashing success by securing financial commitments to reach an additional 120 million women and girls with voluntary family planning services.

Gary Darmstadt, head of the foundation’s Family Health Division, made clear his belief that FBOs are “critical to family planning” in a post-summit blog, pointing out that FBOs “provide up to 40 percent of the total healthcare in many countries in Africa.” It may be even higher than that in some countries.

“The only way the ambitious goals in child health and family planning can be reached is to mobilize the faith community along with other stakeholders, an ‘all hands-on-deck’ approach,” said Ray Martin, executive director of Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) . “Often the hardest-to-reach populations in rural areas and the urban poor are the ones most likely to be reachable by FBOs.”

Faith-based organizations hope to have a positive impact at London Family Planning Summit

Three African presidents and Melinda Gates at Family Planning Summit.

This article was originally published in the "On Faith" section of the Washington Post on July 10, 2012. 

When the British government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bring together governments, donors, civil society, the private sector and the research and development community in London on July 11 for a major summit that hopes to rekindle the neglected embers of family planning, there will be one constituency there that might surprise some people — people of faith, including Christians (Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelicals), Muslims and other faiths.

These religious leaders are working to mobilize the faith community to work with governments, donors and other secular partners to bring family planning back as a major force in maternal, child and community health, something that has been downplayed the past two decades, in part because AIDS and other health issues took precedence, and in part because of the religious and political sensitivities to sexuality and family planning.

This faith support for family planning ranges from progressive Christians to Catholics and evangelicals.