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After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Disease Surveillance and Mapping Project in Bostwana

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Since June 2011, PING (Positive Innovation for the Next Generation), the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), HP, and mobile network provider MASCOM are collaborating to use mobile technologies to identify and respond to malaria outbreaks in Botswana. The programme equips healthcare workers with mobile devices that collect malaria data and can be viewed in a geographic map of disease transmission to generate more context-aware information about outbreaks in order for workers to respond accordingly.

Communication Strategies

PING has equipped health care workers at 16 facilities in the Chobe District of Northern Botswana with HP Palm Pre 2 smart phones. Healthcare workers received training to use the mobile devices to collect malaria data and upload reports, audio, and video. The phones allow facilities to submit regular reports back to the Ministry of Health (MoH) and give health workers the ability to report real-time disease outbreak data, tag the data with GPS coordinates, and issue SMS disease outbreak alerts to all other healthcare workers in the area.

This enables Health Ministry officials to:

  • promptly collect and analyse context-aware data on malarial outbreaks;
  • track developments in real time using GPS coordinates;
  • rapidly help to suppress the spread of malaria;
  • quickly dispatch medicines and mosquito nets; and
  • monitor treatments and accumulate lifesaving research data.

According to HP, this system has taken the reporting and analysis process between Chobe facilities and the Ministry of Health, which usually takes from 3 to 5 weeks to process, and reduces it to a matter of a few minutes. The data is then aggregated in real-time on the backend and graphs and reports are generated in a matter of seconds.

Development Issues

Malaria

Key Points

According to the project, there have been a total of 1,068 real-time notifications and updates on disease patterns to Ministry of Health officials and health care workers. Eighty-nine potential malaria outbreaks have been identified in Botswana’s Chobe region, where the disease surveillance system was first piloted and rolled out. HP and PING have large-scale expansion plans for the programme including an additional 20 facilities in Botswana with over 100 health workers trained by June 1 2012, an added 80 facilities by October 2012, and the surveillance of other diseases, beginning with multi-drug resistance tuberculosis in August 2012. PING also plans to develop a self-training game tutorial to complement the reporting and mapping interface running on the phones, designed to empower health care workers to complete self-paced training on use of the mobile tools.

HP and its partners were awarded the GBCHealth Business Action on Health Award today in the Partnership/Collective Action category.

Partners

PING (Positive Innovation for the Next Generation), the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), MASCOM

Sources

HP website, PING website, and HP Blog on June 8 2012.