Maternal and Child Survival Program Polio Communication Program Summary [Key Accomplishments in Brief]

Key Accomplishments in Brief

Expert Technical Advice

• Supported a communication expert to participate as a member of five Pakistan and six Afghanistan technical advisory groups (TAGs).
• Led or co-coordinated three Pakistan and two Afghanistan communication reviews.
• Sent communication consultants to join six outbreak response teams in the Horn of Africa, Madagascar, and Lao PDR.
• Assisted Ukraine in the development of a social media response to its outbreak.

Research

• Conducted two significant original research projects into household health decision-making in Nigeria and analyzing online conversations on polio in Ukraine.
• Published 13 papers, capturing field experiences from the perspective of polio practitioners in Africa and Asia.

Knowledge Dissemination

• Published 43 editorials, sharing expert opinion from leaders in the field, such as Roma Solomon, Sue Goldstein, and Nellie Bristol, with members of the polio and immunization network.
• Coordinated a process that brought USAID-funded polio partners together to share and consolidate polio communication lessons among themselves.
• Facilitated dissemination and discussion of those findings in public spaces, such as the International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit held in Indonesia in 2018 with peers from other sectors and agencies—for example, a keynote address by Sen. Ayesha Raza Farooq, the Pakistan prime minister’s focal point for polio eradication.
• Held training workshops on research methodology in Nigeria, the UK, and the US, and on social media analysis in Ukraine and the US.
• Developed and expanded The Polio Network website, a public, searchable platform receiving an average of 68 visitors per day with over 284,000 page views since July 2014.
• Created and posted over 700 summaries of polio knowledge to The Polio Network website.
• Further disseminated that knowledge through newsletters, with 25 Immunisation, Vaccines and Polio: DB Clicks being sent out to an average of 11,000 subscribers and 18 special polio editions of The Drum Beat going out to approximately 47,000 subscribers.

Editor's note: Above is part of an end-of-project report on the Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP)'s work as part of a global 5-year cooperative agreement funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the global effort to eradicate poliomyelitis by providing expertise, research, and knowledge dissemination in communication. The full table of contents is here.

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