World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) Global Forum

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WABA

Healthlink Worldwide

Arusha, Tanzania 22-27 September 2002

"In our health communication activities, are we creating a space for reflection so that people can be moved to think critically about their own lives, or are we deciding on the ‘right’ messages that everyone else is expected to consume?"

"We can no longer afford to act as if we are targeting isolated individuals who make simple calculated choices… Approaches to health communication are slowly changing to take into account the importance of social context and wider factors that influence people’s actions and behaviour."

Rob Vincent of the Exchange programme was the core facilitator of a strand of workshops on Information, Education, Communication and Information Technology. Rob gave feedback on some of the key issues from the strand to the final plenary of the WABA global forum.

Many speakers throughout the forum complained of the increasingly unchecked power of global corporations to aggressively promote unhealthy products and push ‘messages’ of their own. Participants were shocked to see an example of this presented at the plenary, as an image from a recent McDonalds advertising campaign in Austria showed a baby suckling a McDonald’s burger bun (picture courtesy of Anne-Marie Kern).

About the Information, Education, Communication and Information Technology workshops

A diverse and lively set of workshops looked at images of breastfeeding in the arts, the use of popular songs and lullabies, prop-making and theatre, use of websites, and Healthlink Worldwide's Quest process for designing locally appropriate materials. Key lessons from the various approaches were shared and the workshops all highlighted that communication process between people, not necessarily the technology should be the central concern.

Two of the workshops presented by David Curtis from Healthlink Worldwide outlined the Quest process for developing locally appropriate health communication materials, which brings together in one package many years of international experience. The workshops also asked participants to think about the challenges they experience in producing effective materials - what obstacles exist and why? In the plenary an appeal was made to participants to document and share with each other their lessons learned from communicating on breastfeeding promotion – something encouraged by Exchange’s work in mapping what does and doesn’t work in health communication. (See mapping guidelines)

More learning from practice