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After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Making People Feel Heard: Embedding Systematic Social Listening in National Vaccination Programs

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Abstract summarising a Preformed Panel Session at the 2022 International SBCC Summit in Morocco (see Related Summaries below for presentations that formed part of this panel):

"Gross inequities in COVID-19 vaccine access have been paralleled by inequities in access to reliable information. Effective social listening can enable understanding of people's concerns and information needs and track misinformation in real time. However, social listening is often equated with social media listening. With half the world digitally disenfranchised, this can only exacerbate data and information inequities.

UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund] has been facilitating vaccine social listening programs at global, regional and country levels which access both online and offline conversations. The Vaccination Demand Observatory (VDO), a global collaboration led by UNICEF, has been strengthening capacity in over 20 countries across 5 UNICEF regions. Early experience has highlighted: 

  • disparate levels of organization and resourcing of current program; 
  • a pivotal role for the social analyst and need for capacity strengthening across other functions; 
  • the potential impact of targeted, evidence-based, context-driven vaccine messaging through digital channels.

Taking a dynamic approach this panel will collect and synthesize insights from participants on how to build and strengthen equitable and effective national health-focused social listening mechanisms. Participants will identify feasible and impactful actions to enable coordinated social listening to the public discourse on vaccines, including access to online and offline conversations and tight coupling of listening to RCCE through real-time actionable insights and recommendations. Primary outputs will be a refined and adaptable model for a national social listening mechanism, a recommended phased approach to integrating such a system into national routine health programming, and actionable insights to enhance current SBCC."

Source

Approved abstract for the 2022 SBCC Summit in Marrakech, Morocco. From SBCC Summit documentation. Image credit: UNICEF