Digital Pulse - Ch 3 - Sec 2 - Healthy Russia 2020

Development Issues: Health, Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, TB, Women, Children, and Youth

Programme Summary

In 2002, The Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP) and its partners (The Futures Group International and Analytical Sciences Inc., or ASI) launched Healthy Russia 2020, a five-year programme using networking and web-based efforts to help Russian institutions improve the health of their people. Health indices for Russia have declined sharply over the last decade in large part due to unhealthy lifestyle behaviours. HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics are also growing and the health of women and children is declining. What observers have noted, however, is that the Russian health system is not oriented towards prevention. Healthy Russia 2020 takes public health communication to a higher level in an innovative, comprehensive and strategic health education and behavioural change program.

“The overarching goal is to bring Russian health indicators to western European levels by the year 2020. The heart of Healthy Russia 2020 will be a membership organization based in Moscow comprised of all professional, government, private, media, and community organizations with a vested interest in improving health in Russia.”

Goals of the project include promoting healthier lifestyles for young Russians, reducing HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), controlling the spread of tuberculosis (TB), and improving the health of women and infants.

Summary of ICT Initiatives

The central strategy involves helping Russian health-related organizations, young people, and other key groups, by creating a new non-governmental health advocacy organisation. This organisation will focus on strategic communication that includes positive health messages and will involve various partnership-building efforts.

Organizers will help this new umbrella organisation promote healthy behaviours by fostering the creation of a Healthy Russia 2020 web portal. The portal will be available in Russian and English. In the first year of the project, the portal will be built for use by citizens, policy makers, health-care administrators, health professionals, and other stakeholders.

US partners will provide technical assistance and training to their Russian colleagues who will implement activities focused on:

• NGO Development: Creating sustainable structures by forming a thoroughly Russian, member-driven coalition,
• NGO Membership: Forging a broad coalition by training members through an innovative, entrepreneurial focus on member satisfaction.
• Creating a dynamic Web Portal that uses proven techniques to serve a wide range of interactive users. The web portal will facilitate and reinforce behaviour change; enable members and peers to access and share health information and advocacy tools; serve as a locus for distance education; attract members; and mobilize collective action.
• Advocacy and social mobilization work with community leaders to create an enabling environment for primary health care innovation and healthy behaviour.
• Communication programs to encourage healthy behaviours and to motivate individuals to take responsibility and see themselves as producers, rather than passive recipients, of health.
• Capacity Building linked to the core competencies the NGO and its members need to create a social movement for health.

This portal will enhance the activities of groups like Project HOPE who have been operating in Russia for a decade. Their current activities are also focused on creating behavioural changes within the Russian population by developing various drug and alcohol prevention programs, some of which are now disseminated in the school system. These materials may see greater exposure as a result of the enhanced communication channels created by Healthy Russia 2020.

Futures Group's activities will include forming an alliance of health services providers into a sustainable health advocacy NGO, and creating a health communication and delivery infrastructure through technical assistance and capacity building. Futures Group will lead the advocacy and community mobilization efforts and an evidence-based medicine component.

ASI will support JHU/CCP on Healthy Russia 2020 by designing an Internet Web portal to promote healthy behaviours across the Eurasian country. The team supporting Healthy Russia 2020 will be based in Moscow. ASI plans to hire several programmers and analysts in Moscow to support the project in collaboration with ASI employees from the US. Eventually, ASI will turn over its operation to a non-profit, non-governmental organization or NGO, for ongoing maintenance and expansion. ASI will then serve as a technical advisor to the NGO.

Healthy Russia 2020 is currently in the process of registering the Russian organizations that will be the engine of the program. They are also creating a web portal that may be up as early as the end of March 2003 with project completion slated for September 2007.

Partners: JHU/CCP, the Futures Group International, ASI, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Project HOPE, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), the Center for Association Leadership, the American Red Cross, the Public Health Foundation, and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS). The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is funding the project.

Source: Press release forwarded by Lisa Cobb to The Communication Initiative on December 3, 2002; and the ASI website.

For More Information Contact:

Lisa Cobb

Program Officer, JHU/CCP

Tel.: 410-659-6146

LCOBB@jhuccp.org

Neill McKee

Chief of Party

Neill@hr2020.ru

Jim Lindley

The Futures Group International

jlindley@futuresgroup.com