The INFO Project Blog

Global health may not often make it into the headlines, but there are an ever-growing number of people and institutions that are sharing their ideas and experiences in this field from blog platforms on the web. We stumbled across a few great posts in the last week, which happened to focus on the role that media can play in HIV prevention:

The blog Technology, Health & Development had a very interesting entry about a new animation-based curriculum for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, developed at Stanford University. Initial versions of both their Indian and Asian prototypes are available for viewing.

The Foreign Policy Public Health blog had an interesting post on a new mass-media campaign, also implemented in India, which aims to encourage people (and men in particular) to talk more openly about sex and condoms. You can see an advert and read more about it on the BBC.

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We can’t stop watching this Telugu condom promo, from Nrityanjali Academy in India’s Andhra Pradesh. It was among YouTube’s highest rated clips.

With INFO’s forthcoming report on Behavior Change Communication, which I conducted researched on, I was excited to see what CCP colleagues are doing at Pakistan’s Health Communication Network.The recent interview with the drama serial writer Noor ul-Huda Shah was particularly interesting because of my background in entertainment-education. I’ve found that entertaining formats attract greater listenership and can be extremely effective in changing behavior.

I especially thought it was interesting when Ms. Shah, who lives in Islamabad, suggested that writers should be committed to addressing their society’s social issues and not just write for entertainment’s sake.

When asked if one can succeed in conveying educational messages through gripping stories, she says,

One should not be interested only in making the money through entertainment because that is where you compromise your feelings the most.

Hear, hear. 

Posted by Nahyun Cho, Family Health International

“People sat in a theater for 12 hours listening to an audio drama,” said Population Media Center (PMC) president Bill Ryerson in a recent interview with the BBC’s Health Check reporter Claudia Hammond.

The drama, called Maleda, or Dawn, dealt with HIV transmission and targeted an at-risk population in Ethiopia.

We were excited to hear this broadcast because an upcoming issue of Population Reports will analyze the way this programming works, including PMC’s work in Ethiopia. Hammond’s interviews with PMC and excerpts from a riveting Mexican soap opera promoting family planning reveals the enormous country-wide popularity and impact entertainment-education programs can have.

“We had a cassette-based program that we handed out to truckers en route from Addis Ababa to Djibouti,” Ryerson tells Hammond in the broadcast, “they developed a shortage of blank cassette tapes along the truck route because people were making bootleg copies for their friends.”

A broadcast inside an Ethiopian theatre–12 straight hours of audio recording–found a rapt audience, according to Ryerson. The drama had measurable impact.

“We learned… truck drivers had made the decision to become monogamous… several sex workers reportedly have given up the work and gotten other jobs,” Ryerson says.

In an INFO-led Youth and Media e-forum from May, Ryerson led a discussion on radio-based interventions.

Entertainment programming attracts the biggest audiences. [They] become involved emotionally with the program–and in the case of drama, with the characters and their lives.

Ryerson wrote in a later exchange on this forum that in Ethiopia, PMC’s first long-running program cost just 4 US cents to reach each listener.  

Click on the icon to listen to Health Check’s take on Entertainment-Education. 

Stay tuned for the forthcoming INFO Reports guide to creating successful Entertainment-Education programming.