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SING MUSIC VIDEO

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On World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007, a charity record titled “Sing” was released globally to raise money and awareness for the activist HIV/AIDS organization, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The organization campaigns for treatment for people with HIV and to reduce new HIV infections.

Singer Annie Lennox teamed up with 22 other female superstar singers to record a song that Lennox had written, “Sing.” Some of the other singers include Madonna, Celine Dion, Pink, Shakira, Dido, Faith Hill, Joss Stone, and Melissa Etheridge. The “Sing Campaign” also encourages people to get involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS by, for example, donating directly to TAC, organizing events to raise money for TAC, hosting the “Sing” banner on other Web sites, raising awareness about the Sing Campaign and HIV/AIDS by word-of-mouth, and educating children in schools about HIV/AIDS. Watch the “Sing” music video on “MySpaceTV Videos.”

As one of the authors of the recently published Population Reports issue on behavior change communication programs (“Communication for Better Health”), this campaign caught my eye for a number of different reasons. First and foremost, the campaign design of using popular music by well-known singers gives the campaign great potential for success. Read the rest of this entry »

For our Elements of Successful Family Planning Web site, we are talking to experts about what they feel the most important components of good programs are. While in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina for the Science Blogging 2008 conference, I caught up with several excellent sources of information on this topic at Family Health International world HQ, on an unremarkable strip of Highway 54. Unfortunately, INFO’s video camera was not working, so the audio recording of the conversations is what will go up on the Media Library of the Family Planning Success Web site when it launches later this month.

Here is a sneak preview of my conversation with Dr. John Stanback, Senior Research Associate for Family Health International. Dr. Stanback on Community-Based Distribution of Injectables.

In this clip, he argues in favor of providing injectable contraception without prescriptions from rural drug shops, based on his experience studying the way this works in Uganda.

CBDs [community based distributors] are typically para-medicals that have received a little bit of training; much less then a medical professional or anyone with clinical training. So far it seems that the CBDs can do just as good a job, if they are properly trained, as the nurses… If it can be made safe, it would be great opportunity to improve access.

Click here to hear from Dr. Stanback’s colleague Dr. Irina Yacobson, talking about the importance of well-trained family planning staff.

On my recent trip to Beijing, I was able to sit down with the director of Marie Stopes International China, Lily Liu Liqing, and American expatriate Alice Zheng, who is working there as a project assistant. Both had a lot to say about the work of MSIC in the domain of family planning and reproductive health in China, which is interesting in its own right but also has implications for work in other contexts. As they discuss in the following clip, China’s unique history and rapid socio-economic transformation have implications both for the needs of the population, and the methods by which organizations can go about fulfilling them.

-Ted Alcorn, The INFO Project