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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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Measles vaccination improves the equity of health outcomes: Evidence from Bangladesh.

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Bishai, D., M. Koenig, et al. (2003). "Measles vaccination improves the equity of health outcomes: Evidence from Bangladesh." Health Economics 12(5): 415-419.

Objectives: This paper asks whether measles vaccination can reduce socioeconomic differentials in under five mortality rates (U5MR) in a setting characterized by extreme poverty and high levels of childhood mortality.

Design: Longitudinal cohort study based on quasi experimental design.

Setting: Data come from the phased introduction of a measles vaccine intervention in Matlab, Bangladesh in 1982.

Subjects: There were 16 270 Bangladeshi children aged 9-60 months. 

Intervention: The intervention cohort received measles vaccine.

Main outcome measures: Socioeconomic differentials in U5MR between the lowest and highest socioeconomic status (SES) quintiles in a cohort of 8135 vaccinated children and a cohort of unvaccinated age matched controls. Mantel-Haenszel rate ratios for the lowest to highest SES quintile were computed. SES was measured by factor analysis of maternal schooling, land holdings, dwelling size, and number of rooms.

Results: The U5MR ratio of lowest SES to highest was 2.27 (95% CI = 1.62-3.19) in the unvaccinated population and 1.42 (95%CI = 0.94-2.15) in the vaccinated population. The difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated U5MR ratios was statistically significant (p<0.10) and robust across alternative measures of SES.

Conclusion: Children from the poorest quintile were more than twice as likely to die as those from the least quintile in the absence of measles vaccination. Universal distribution of measles vaccination largely nullified SES related mortality differentials within a high mortality population of children.