Happy New Year! I would like to congratulate everyone who engaged with the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition to make 2021 a successful year. I am truly impressed with the commitment from our many partners from around the world to join together in this effort. While COVID-19 continues to interrupt campaigns and impact our health systems, we were able to learn about so many innovative approaches to planning and safely delivering campaigns and, most importantly, how campaign programs are working together to meet common health goals.
In 2021, the Coalition hosted several events that highlighted these innovative practices:
- In our 4 Test & Learn webinars, partner organizations identified opportunities for campaign integration, described the factors that influence community engagement in campaigns, discussed ways to expand measures of effectiveness and shared findings on the costs of integrated campaigns in two countries.
- The 2nd Annual Coalition meeting in October convened more than 200 individuals from 36 countries. Nearly 15 hours of recorded discussions, panels, and presentations from the event are available to watch on campaigneffectiveness.org.
New resources were also developed on campaign integration:
- Eight case studies on collaborative planning for integrated health campaigns describe experiences from six different countries on ways to engage stakeholders and communities in the planning process. A summary of key findings and promising practices will be disseminated in the coming months.
- In collaboration with PAHO, a technical brief on Integration of Neglected Infectious Diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean was published which provides an overview of program experiences with conducting integrated health campaigns in the LAC Region related to three NIDs–soil-transmitted helminthiases (STH), trachoma, and lymphatic filariasis (LF).
- The Campaign Integration Working Group (CIWG) developed a Decision Guidance Tool on campaign integration which assists officials and stakeholders at the country and global levels to identify and collect information on potential opportunities for health campaign integration. An interactive web-based version of this tool is under development as well as several country “use cases” on its application in the field.
- The Campaign Calendar is now tracking co-delivered campaigns and has expanded information on COVID-19 vaccination campaigns as well as other global campaign data.
I encourage all of you to read the commentary from the Coalition Leadership Team on Rethinking Public Health Campaigns in the COVID-19 Era: a call to improve effectiveness, equity and impact. In this article, they recommend five actions which we will strive to move forward on this year. In 2022 the Coalition will conduct a landscape analysis on campaign financing policies and practices; launch two new workgroups–on campaign digitalization and on transitioning campaigns into PHC systems; and expand the integration toolkit. You can also expect an offering of several learning events to discuss and respond to findings from the implementation research teams and partners and an exciting gathering of members at the 3rd Annual Coalition Meeting in October 2022 (dates TBD).
I’m excited about the Coalition’s plans for 2022 and will continue to share updates in this newsletter and on campaigneffectivness.org. I hope to see you in our meetings and events and invite you to reach out to me or my team if you have ideas or suggestions for the Coalition.