Making a Business of Good Reproductive Health
Throughout the ten years that Chastain Fitzgerald traveled in Africa, no matter how remote the village, there was one constant. If she asked enough people, she could find the villager who sold some combination of goods—matches, chewing gum, flour— and always, always, Coca-Cola.
The fact that the Coca-Cola Company gets its product to these far-flung customers only excites Fitzgerald, the Director of New Business at Population Services International. “If Coke can get there, condoms can get there,” she says. “When there is already commercial distribution in place, we’re going to work with that.”
…“Using social marketing, these groups convey what people need to hear in a way they want to hear it,” says Nicole Gray, a program officer for the Hewlett Foundation’s Population Program. “We’ve watched as these organizations have used the principles of business and marketing to improve access to family planning resources in the countries most in need.”
Drop in US Domestic Violence Figures Raises Questions
A government survey in the United States has revealed some startling figures on rates of domestic violence in the country.
The survey suggests that violence in the home has plummeted by nearly two-thirds over the last decade and a half…
‘The evidence from Australia, from a review I've just been writing over the last few weeks is that in fact primary prevention strategies can work.
We can shift the attitudes among, for example, young men that feed into some young men's use of violence against girls and women they know. We can shift the broader social norms that allow violence to go on unchecked.
Whether that's through education programs in schools, through social marketing campaigns on our television, or through organisational responses, for example, the AFL and the NRL have taken up to improve attitudes and behaviours amongst their players.
All those strategies can make a positive difference, they're under funded, under utilised but they can help stop violence from occurring in the first place.’
USAID and P&G Highlight Partnership for Safe Drinking Water in Africa
…This partnership focuses on provision of two proven, cost-effective, household-level technologies to disinfect drinking water. WaterGuard is a dilute bleach product developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and PUR(TM) Purifier of Water is a powdered water treatment product developed by Procter & Gamble and CDC. These disinfection technologies have been shown to reduce disease and death in numerous health intervention trials. The technologies are now in the process of being promoted using social marketing and other approaches to raise awareness and change behavior in many African countries. They are also being used to provide safe drinking water for emergency relief, including the recent floods in Kenya and Ethiopia, and to help address cholera outbreaks in the Congo and Malawi.
New Montana Meth Project Survey Shows Dramatic Shift in Attitudes Toward Meth
The Montana Meth Project today released the results of its 2007 Montana Meth Use & Attitudes Survey. The statewide survey, gathered from a respondent group consisting of teens, young adults, and parents of teens, found that people's attitudes toward methamphetamine use have shifted substantially since the Meth Project initiated its first wave of anti-Meth advertising in September 2005. Compared to the 2005 Benchmark Survey conducted before the Meth Project launched, the new results show that people are now more aware of the dangers of Meth, more likely to disapprove of taking the drug, and more likely to have had parent-child discussions on the subject. A key finding showed that teens, the target audience of the Meth Project’s media campaign, saw Meth as carrying a greater risk than any other drug if used just once – greater even than heroin.
The latest survey results also indicated that the Montana Meth Project is increasingly well-known across the state, and that its television and radio ads were a growing source of information for both teens and parents. Ninety-six percent of all parents surveyed had discussed Meth with their children in the past year (an increase of 13% since 2005), and more than half stated that these television ads had prompted the discussion…
"These findings are truly impressive," said Geoff Feinberg, Vice President of GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, which conducted the survey. “At Roper, we measure the impact of many social marketing campaigns, and the Montana Meth Project stands out for its impressive ability to change attitude toward Meth in such a short period of time."
Latino, Black, Asian Leaders Call For Help Fighting HIV In LA
A broad coalition of Latino, African American, and Asian legislators, health care providers, and activists Friday called for new strategies to build awareness around HIV/AIDS testing among minorities in the greater Los Angeles area…
In California, the most common form of HIV/AIDS transmission is through male-to-male sexual contact. Many Latino, African American, and Asian Pacific Islander men who have sex with men do not self-identify as gay and therefore may reject prevention messages and other social marketing campaigns targeted to openly gay men, the coalition said Friday.
MAPP Seeks Funding to Fight Depression in LGBT Community
LGBT people are three times more likely to suffer from depression than those outside of the community, said Craig Covey, CEO of the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project.
"Besides reducing the quality of life for folks suffering (with) depression, we also believe that depression can influence other behaviors, including substance abuse, alcoholism, other addictions, and risky sexual behavior including HIV/AIDS risk," he said.
MAPP is seeking support for the creation of a social marketing campaign to raise awareness of depression in the LGBT community, including the associated symptoms and effects on people suffering from the condition.
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