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Child rights action with informed and engaged societies
Children

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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Health Care Improvement (HCI) Project

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Launched in 2007, the Health Care Improvement Project (HCI) is a 5-year effort funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to assist national and local programmes to scale up evidence-based interventions and improve outcomes in child health, maternal and newborn care, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and reproductive health. Drawing on interactive online processes for sharing information and facilitating knowledge exchange, HCI is working in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. This portal site was designed to provide an open forum for sharing best practices, successes, challenges, tools, and lessons that could be useful for others to improve health care.

Communication Strategies

The HCI initiative revolves around an interactive website that is designed to not only provide information about initiatives, tools, and strategies - many of which are communication-related - but also to foster a community of practice. The HCI portal is designed to facilitate documentation and sharing of practical knowledge, best practices, tools, and implementation experiences to support improvement activities in the following topic areas: HIV/AIDS; human resources/workforce development; malaria; maternal, newborn, and child health; orphans and vulnerable children; patient safety; reproductive health; and tuberculosis. Each improvement topic page features:

  • Tools for assessment and improvement - example from the HIV/AIDS topic page: "HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma, Fear, and Discriminatory Practices among Healthcare Providers in Rwanda"
  • Improvement experiences that describe the interventions, results, and lessons learned from national and local health care improvement efforts - example from the orphans and vulnerable children topic page: "Changing Youth Participation from a 'Token Voice' to a Key Actor"
  • Other resources on the web that offer tools or knowledge to support health care improvement.

The HCI Improvement Database makes information about tested improvement strategies and interventions available through an openly accessible, web-based knowledge management system. The database features improvement reports, which are short reports about a specific health care improvement experience; collaborative profiles, which are descriptions of actual improvement collaboratives and include tools and related information of interest to those who want to implement a similar collaborative; and publications and other types of resources related to health care improvement, including both those published by the HCI Project as well as those of other organisations working in improvement worldwide. Any registered site user may contribute improvement reports and collaborative profiles to this database.

 

As part of HCI and its portal, there is a CHW Central community of practice, which is designed to provide a space for information and dialogue about community health workers (CHWs) around the world. The community features resources (including training materials, tools, journal articles, etc.), discussion forums, an active blog by experts in CHWs, and news and links related to CHWs. For example, an October 2011 posting to this community of practice reads: "When you hear the term 'community health worker' you may well have in mind quite a specific profile. You may picture someone doing community talks and going house-to-house giving behavior change...Join the conversation..."

Development Issues

Health, Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, Children.

Partners

University Research Co., LLC (URC), Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs (CCP), EnCompass LLC, Family Health International (FHI), Initiatives Inc., Health Research, Inc. (HRI), and The Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Sources

Implementing Best Practices (IBP) Global Community eNewsletter, July 5 2011; and HCI portal, December 12 2011. Image credit: 2008 Joseph Kariuki, Courtesy of Photoshare