Media and Global Health: From Information to Action

"Internews believes local media is an under-utilized tool in public health strategies. Establishing, supporting, and enhancing local information platforms can contribute significantly to health-seeking behavior and community mobilization around health issues."

This document expresses and supports with advocacy and capacity building strategies Internews’ goal on global health: "to ensure free, easy access to quality health information so that individuals, communities, and governments can make informed decisions to protect, improve, and save lives."

The fundamentals of Internews' work on health journalism are:

• "Engage editors and media managers.
• Establish strong relationships with Ministries of Health.
• Build connections with journalists who cover health.
• Address journalists by skill levels and media.
• Take a participatory approach to training.
• Limit the number of trainees in workshops.
• Create structured incentive programs.
• Provide media relations training for health agencies.
• Build and support Media Resource Centers, which feature studios and equipment, internet, contacts database, editorial support.
• Integrate digital tools, social media, online and offline platforms.
• Offer long-term mentoring."

Internews gives data to support its methodology of investing in journalist training: "The investment in informed, accurate, engaging public information on radio, television and in print brings sustainable returns, far beyond that of messaging campaigns."

mHealth initiatives include the use of mobile phones and other new technologies to improve public health systems and services and offer a means of two-way communication. They do not, as stated here, replace traditional media, from local language, community media to national, state-run radio and television services. "To provide information people can act on, journalists must be able to identify good quality research, tell a good story, entertain, educate and engage their audiences." A combination of new and traditional media to share health information can engage community members to, for example, report human trafficking on an SMS (text messaging) help line or link pregnant women to information, services, and each other.

Case studies include the following:

• Internews’ daily radio programme Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (ENDK, or "News You Can Use"), on air since the earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, analyses an average of 50-100 SMS texts sent to ENDK daily. Many are on health questions. From an evaluation, "100% of listeners in focus groups are able to identify specific pieces of information they have integrated into their daily lives, such as how to prevent malaria by using a mosquito net and getting rid of standing water." In an evaluation after a cholera information campaign, radio topped the list as where 88.3% of respondents accessed the campaign information.
• In Kenya, the Voices for Health project hosts The Write Spot, a media hub in Nairobi with production facilities and online and interactive tools and multi-media resources for journalists to use, free of charge, regardless of their media affiliation or emplyer. The project offers an e-learning health journalism platform, designed to equip journalists with the tools for critical analytical thinking and in-depth research to distinguish themselves as public health journalism specialists.
• Internews launched Local Voice in 2003, implemented in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tamil Nadu, India. Initially designed to train journalists in developing countries to improve and expand their coverage of HIV and related issues, the project has evolved to include other health priorities including reproductive and sexual health and malaria. A similar United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) project, Turnaround Time, works in the Mekong region, designing training materials for HIV reporting in Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Khmer.
• In Belarus, Internews’ Social Innovation Camp (SICamp - Internews) was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, July 2011, to bring together social innovators from the non-profit, media, commercial, and public sector with software developers and designers from across Europe and Central Asia. "The objective was to jumpstart online communities to build effective web-based solutions to real social problems. NovaMama was awarded a seed grant to develop their idea: the platform will serve as an online and offline community to help pregnant women and new mothers in Belarus connect with each other, learn about what to expect during pregnancy and afterward, and share advice and support."
• In East and Southeast Asia, Internews developed a journalism training programme in 2006 to improve the technical skills needed to cover prevention of the spread of the H5N1 virus in a scientifically accurate way.
• After July 2010 flooding in Pakistan, "Internews’ Humanitarian Information Portal (HIP) covers two of the worst-hit provinces, Sindh and Punjab, working with local journalists to produce radio reports for the affected communities to ensure important information about aid and assistance. The informative programs cover health matters such as nutrition, malaria, hygiene and mother/child health, child safety and vulnerable communities. HIP and ensuing health information is provided online, over the radio, shared through listening groups, and accessed via mobile phones through call-in programs and SMS, providing critical health information to populations in need."
• In South Sudan, "Internews has supported ... independent local media through its network of six FM radio stations. By linking the community ratio stations with civil society organizations, local and international non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders, the stations produce ...broadcasts, call-in shows and interactive programming on a range of development issues including health and education."
• Internews has worked with local stations in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in West Bank and with the United Nations in Gaza on a range of public health issues.
• In Afghanistan, Internews’' Salam Watandar (Hello Countryman) is a public broadcast service for independent and community radio stations, many of which Internews established or supported as part of a network of more than 40 stations. Internews provides equipment and training to local journalists, so they can produce independent radio content and has established a satellite distribution system for radio programming that reaches a majority of the population. Jaan-e Joor (Good Health) is a weekly health show that uses narrative storytelling.
• Internews launched the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) in 2004 to empower journalists from developing countries to cover the environment more effectively. EJN has built and/or supports local networks of environmental journalists in roughly a dozen countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, East Africa, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico.
• In Nigeria, "Internews helped local media ...[focus on] health policymakers and opinion leaders, through tools including workshops, building journalist networks, and broadcasting radio and television debates...."