This week, a new article written by the Health Campaign Effectiveness Leadership Team was published in BMJ Global Health. The commentary, titled “Rethinking public health campaigns in the COVID-19 era: a call to improve effectiveness, equity and impact,” summarizes the effect of COVID-19 on critical health programs, and presents opportunities to align campaigns with PHC strategies, in addition to reaching unreached communities.
Read the article here.
Through the commentary, members of the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition Leadership Team call on all health campaign stakeholders, including Ministries of Health, local and international non-governmental and civil society organizations to partner with them to identify new solutions and serve as early adopters of innovations in campaign delivery.
The article underscores that this moment is an opportunity to rethink how campaigns can better align with PHC strategies and reach unreached communities.
“If there is any upside (or silver lining) to disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that it has created a sense of urgency to rethink the way we plan and implement campaigns to increase their effectiveness, efficiency, equity and alignment with national PHC strategies,” states the article.
The commentary highlights five key recommendations for improving campaign effectiveness, equity and impact:
- Strengthen collaboration and shared action among the different programmatic areas and campaign platforms.
- Engage communities and local leaders in solutions.
- Support and test integrated and collaborative campaign service delivery approaches.
- Adopt funding approaches and policies that enable and incentivize countries to use campaigns more strategically, thus reducing inequities and competition between campaigns and PHC services.
- Examine opportunities to coordinate and build on current health campaign platforms and country expertise during delivery of COVID-19 vaccines.
“We are at a unique moment. Although there is growing pressure to implement improved approaches and lessons to be learnt from past and current campaigns, it will take a coordinated effort to make the programmatic and policy shifts that will enable us to achieve shared health goals,” the article states. We must seize this moment to work together to ensure that critical health interventions, including COVID-19 vaccines and prevention strategies, safely and effectively reach all populations in need.”
Read the full text of the article here.