Eliminating National Gaps—Advancing Global Equity
Throughout the world, maternal mortality continues to be a largely preventable tragedy that adversely affects children, families, communities—and ultimately, nations. The ENGAGE Project (Eliminating National Gaps—Advancing Global Equity) is a global initiative designed to enhance understanding of this public health crisis through targeted outreach and the use of innovative communication technologies. Currently, the project is working in four launch countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, and Uganda.
Specifically, ENGAGE serves the reproductive health needs of women in developing countries by raising the visibility of unmet need for family planning and high levels of unplanned pregnancies, and their costs, consequences, and solutions. The ultimate goal of this project is to contribute to the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality in participating countries. To achieve this goal, the project aims to promote policy dialogue on strengthening family planning and selected reproductive health services. Target policy audiences include high-level government policymakers, civic and religious leaders, program officials, journalists, and others.
The project is implemented by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), in partnership with the Gapminder Foundation (see below). Project staff and consultants include experts in public policy, medicine, global health, policy communication, journalism, demography, and the health sciences. They offer a breadth of experience covering every region of the developing world, assisting local partners with analyzing, packaging, and communicating population and health data to policy audiences to improve programs and policies.
Key Activities
Country activities and approaches include:
- Developing evidence-based multimedia presentations that use new state-of-the-art techniques in graphic design and presentation. A central feature of the project is using the groundbreaking "Trendalyzer" technologies developed by Hans Rosling, founder of the Gapminder Foundation, and his team (www.gapminder.org).
- Strengthening local capacities to draw out policy implications from the latest population and RH data, design strategic communication plans, and sustain advocacy efforts.
- Increasing knowledge among high-level policymakers and community influentials about the magnitude of high fertility and unplanned pregnancies, maternal morbidity and mortality, and their costs, consequences, and solutions.
- Educating journalists on the consequences of unplanned pregnancies and maternal morbidity and mortality, using the multimedia presentations as teaching tools.
Implementation Strategy
Collaboration with local and international stakeholders is central to the approach of ENGAGE. The project team is tapping into existing networks and ongoing initiatives to add value to local policy communication activities and fortify the project's efforts to foster policy dialogue. Task forces comprising multiple public- and private-sector stakeholders working in family planning and reproductive health have been established—or in some cases existing task forces reinforced—in each of the participating countries.
Launch Countries
ENGAGE is a multiyear project that may work in up to eight countries in the next three years. The project is currently working in four launch countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, and Uganda.
For More Information
Rhonda R. Smith
Associate Vice President, International Programs
Director, ENGAGE Project
Population Reference Bureau
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 520
Washington, D.C. 20009 USA
E-mail: rhondas@prb.org
202-939-5427
202-328-3937 fax
The Gapminder Foundation
Gapminder is a nonprofit organization created for the purpose of developing and providing free software that visualizes human development. The foundation's goal is to promote a fact-based world view by bringing statistical storytelling to new levels. Gapminder's Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting two-dimensional presentations into engaging interactive animations. The Gapminder team believes that decisionmakers, researchers, academics, and many important organizations lack adequate tools to convey data and information. Gapminder's exciting new technologies for data animations will be used for presentation development under the ENGAGE Project.
See Gapminder's website at: www.gapminder.org