Welcome to Communication4Impact!
A group of friends passionate about communication
Communication4Impact (C4I) is the initiative of a group of friends and colleagues who have collaborated on multiple unique global health projects over a decade. None of us are communication experts but we have explored different forms of communication in our work. As communication was never something we received training on as part of our formal public health, international health, or medical training, we had to explore widely and teach ourselves the skills and tools required by different forms of communication.
Through our learning and experiences, we have seen firsthand the valuable role communication methodologies play in amplifying our global health work and also how it serves as an enjoyable creative outlet. Through the Communication4Impact network, we wish to share our learning with other global health professionals. We hope that collectively, we can catalyze and inspire a broader community of like-minded individuals and organizations influencing global health through effective communication.
Top image - left to right: Garry Aslanyan, Magaly Blas, Luis Gabriel Cuervo, Rachel Hounsell & Lindi van Niekerk
The communication gap in global health
In November 2022, we decided to test the water at the Health Systems Research Symposium in Bogota, Colombia to see if there was interest from other colleagues to learn and share about communication. We hosted our first 3-hour skills-building session titled: “Global Health Communication: Skills to change evidence into influence”. To our surprise, the session was attended by over 40 global health researchers and practitioners working across 19 countries, representing leading schools of public health, non-profit health agencies, bilateral health agencies, donors, and Ministries of Health. What we enjoyed most about this session, was that many attendees had their own communication story to share – whether it was a challenge they were trying to overcome or a practical experience of success. It was unanimously agreed during this session that global health communication deserves more attention, capacity building, and support
Our proposition
Communication4Impact (C4I) thus intends to fill this gap for information, resources, and experiences in global health. Through this platform, we hope to:
Bring global health professionals interested in communication together online and in person.
Raise awareness for the need for and value of global health communication.
Capacitate ourselves as global health professionals, by sharing communication approaches, forms, and tools that we have found to benefit our work.
Share practical project case studies (ideally, not only ours but yours too!)
Our invitation
If you are a global health implementer, researcher, practitioner or student, we would like to invite you to join Communication4Impact. There are several ways to be involved:
Subscribe, and you will be sure to receive regular articles on various communication topics.
Participate in the comments section of each article and let us know what you think!
Share your learning by contributing an article to this site. We would love to post your articles. Please send them to Lindi at lindi@chembecollaborative.org.
Share your experience in audio or video format – over time, we would like to share communication case studies from global health projects. To make it easy for you, we could interview you and post a well-edited audio or video recording on this site.
C4I is curated by Chembe Collaborate free of charge at the moment but if you have any resources or financial support available to contribute to growing this network, it would be greatly appreciated!
