The Toolbox for Building Communication Strategies by USAID

USAID has numerous initiatives or functions including health care initiatives that seek to tap into health care opportunities that enhance middle income countries health services. This creative brief seeks to identify core aspects of an instrument proposed by USAID called the Toolbox for Building Communication Strategies, an essential subset for healthcare institutions, individual stakeholders and other ideal proponents of effective communication in healthcare sector. Over the past 30 years, a quiet but dramatic change in the health education programs. The international health organization, health ministries, and other PVOs recognize the uniquely essential role that the prevention and promotion of health play in the health care system that this initiative would create. Besides, they also ascribe to the fact that modern medical communication approaches offer the program and the general well-being of different populations. The problem in this confine is how organizations undertake effective health communication programs.

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The prospects of tool box are therefore designed in a manner that assists health communication program managers towards enhancing their organizations and promote their credibility while at the same time strengthening the communication skills of the staff members and confidence in the communication approaches they assume as described in the Tool Box. This set of practical tools encompasses a set of management concepts, ideas, models and strategies that are tested and affirmed from the field under pressures of real life situations and other logistical barriers. Besides, they are also subject to evaluation based on human resource issues and challenging cultural environments that complicate the process of funding. These aspects are ideal in the appropriation of the development communication process in the healthcare sector. USAID's advancement of this initiative is core to the enhanced communication process within the health industry in general and enhanced service delivery in particular.

The Toolbox for Building Communication Capacity' is a unit projection that seeks to promote healthcare communication processes and the world of healthcare in general. It focuses on the middle-income and developing economies in the world more pronouncedly. The projects act as a USAID's flagship from the context of Social and behavior change communications project, presented as (SBCC). The organization's Health Communication Capacity Collaborative initiative has a sole mandate of serving the world SBCC community in general. The district includes among others: SBCC organizations, service-based entities integrating SBCC into their internal organizational activities, government partners in charge of oversight of the health care education as well as health communication, universities and advertisement agencies ranging from novice groups to experts.

The project enshrined in the project goals of SBCC prescribe to a researched, planned and interactive proves aimed at changing the social conditions and behaviors of individuals. The activities meant to facilitate the entity to accomplish its objectives; the project manipulates advocacy, behavior change and social mobilization towards achieving its desired goals that lie in finding a tipping point for sustainable change in the ways and the entire society. This mission is challenging but meant to perfect the processes. Subsequently, the project is established on five-steps process typically referred to as C-planning that meets certain distinct standards across the following components:

Developing an understanding of the context via a proactive situation analysis

Focus and design of an efficient communication strategy

Establishment of materials and interventions for change

Implementation and monitoring of the modification processes

Evaluation and re-planning the entire program

The project also constitutes an undertaking of University Needs Assessment through which it maps out the present academic fields related to health communication in both low and middle-income economies. Subsequently, through the mother organization (USAID), the project offers an avenue for enhancing healthcare communication process through a team of experts from the SBCC community of practices based on internships, webinars, and Springboards with the SBCC organizations for university students in pursuit of healthcare-related disciplines. This process is ideal in bridging the gaps between academic progress and possible development in healthcare communication perspectives besides sharing the best practices in the SBCC.

Also, the project has also established high-quality tools of assessment such as the PROGRES among others that serve in the identification of capacity building and measurement of changes in organizations' capacity for a period. The capacity assessment procedure also constitutes the central pillar of the project in the establishment of programmatic capacity planning besides allowing SBCC organizations towards identifying goals for the sustainability of the entire organization and the development of approaches for assessing the ability of the whole project.

The project is geared towards integrating organizational development alongside the provisions of SBCC by her leadership development initiatives that blend between learning programs and key addresses of the project goals in which participants identify leadership challenges in their organizational settings. Some of the management and leadership training for the project execution are derived from HC3 that supplied training across 38 distinct organizations working on a series of SBCC projects that have been spread across 17 countries. These contributions are critical to the establishment of unique capacities for enhanced product development in the long-run. Through the capacity built by this project, it is possible for new creativity and freedoms where business opportunity and ideas are driven more by sound market demands as opposed to the interest of donors and foundations' initiatives.

The target audience of this project initiative perpetrated by this creative brief is the healthcare professionals in the healthcare sectors and the training and development areas. In essence, there has been pronounced demand for high profile communication in the area of health to ensure an efficient instruction provision for the community of patients as well as across the working professionals. In this regard, this creative brief provides an essential knowledge transfer platform for the healthcare stakeholders in the training institutions and other passive healthcare sectors such as laboratory work segments. In general, the SBCC community comprises the primary target audience of this creative brief that influences agenda development in the training and operations either directly or indirectly.

While undertaking this brief, it is important to provide a broad level of research to facilitate knowledge integration among all healthcare stakeholders. In essence, this brief aims at changing the perception of the target audience on the importance efficient communication in the training segment as a function of advanced healthcare. This aspect is critical particularly, in the training sections that has seen minimal attention in recent times but has drawn a wide range of interest from different sources. In essence, the perception of communication channels, mediums and other variables in the healthcare training segment has been a major drawback to the enhanced service delivery in the health care sector, an aspect that has attracted significant interest from various players in health care areas. This brief will, therefore, change the perception of healthcare trainers towards communication and its ultimate role in enhanced care delivery with the solid connection between the SBCC communities at large.

There are various impediments to effective communication in the training and career development in the healthcare sectors and the pieces of training in particular. In this regard, the Society of trainers and trainees have placed insignificant importance to communication as the central pillar of the network of enhanced care delivery based on different initiatives that have been undertaken alongside improved technology in the training and care delivery sector. Another significant barrier is the poor attitude on perceived social pressures as well as perceptions that other outstanding individual think they ought to perform the behaviors instead.

While the correct healthcare practice may be adopted, the community of health sector may intend to act but later discover that they lack the necessary skills to undertake the behavior through proper information transfer across different quarters of the project ideas. On the other side, individuals who access healthcare premises may encounter other external series of constraints. For instance, people may intend to use contraceptives. However, the fail due to lack of access to these products or their marital partners objects to their use which may limit the effectiveness of these adoptions. Similarly, this scenario may recur in the healthcare sector where individuals are willing to perfect their communication but have no necessary instrument of information transfer as prescribed in the SBCC objective domain related to the tool box.

With the above mission coined from the USAID strategic health initiatives via the tool box mechanism, the operative works alongside missions, local partners, and governments. Subsequently, it is possible to identify gaps and object to high priority areas with high impacts activities being brought on board to benefit the bigger SBCC community alongside other surrounding partners. The activities surrounding this project includes the establishment of technical working groups, communities of practice and the communication coordination committees charged with developing the best criteria for the programs and materials under use while collaborating on wider global-level strategies. These aspects are ideal for enhanced service delivery in the healthcare sector of the world propelled by self-initiatives prescribed by the USAID missions under the tool box.

In the modern health care system, the processes of delivery involve many interfaces while the patients' handoffs among many medical practitioners with varying levels of educational and occupational training. Some f the related medical errors particularly those caused by failure to communicate effectively are one of the most pervasive challenges in the contemporary medical health organizations. It has been found that if medical errors were to appear in the National Center for Health Statistic's lineup showing the leading causes of death in the US, they would perhaps account for number 5 which indicates a higher level compared to other killer causes such as diabetes, accidents and Alzheimer's diseases, AIDs notwithstanding. Worse off still, communication failures are also one of the leading causes of failure causing sentinel events that were reported to Joint Commission of medical services between 1995 and 2004. The above elements indicate some of the essential items that mark the essence of enhanced communication in the healthcare in training and practitioner's perspective as demonstrated by this brief.

The need for increased communication across different groups of healthcare sectors is very essential. In essence, the audience must subscribe to the best practice of improved communication between stakeholders the healthcare training and practice segment both at institutional and individual levels. This would ideally minimize shortcomings associated with poor communication in the healthcare sector. The brief will be channeled through circulars and newspaper publications in general.

The creative brief persuading the adoption...