Integrated Marketing Communication for Behavioral Impact (IMC/COMBI) in Health and Social Development
in Collaboration with the World Health Organization
Location: New York, New York
Dates: July 9-27, 2012
Arrival/Departure: Participants should expect to arrive on Sunday, July 8th and depart on Saturday, July 28th.
Institute Dates: Classes will begin on Monday, July 9th and end on Friday, July 27th.
Fees
2012 Housing Cost - $850*
2012 Tuition Cost - $3595
2012 TOTAL COST - $4,445 US DOLLARS
*More information: NYU Housing
Who Should Apply?
Health and social development professionals who have the responsibility for designing, supervising or managing health education and other IEC/social mobilization programs to achieve specific behavioral goals. Prior communication training is not required for this Institute.
Reminder: Please note that the language of instruction in this Summer Institute will be English. All application materials must also be in English.
Goals of the IMC/COMBI Method:
Finding effective ways to encourage new behaviors and achieve behavioral results.
The
challenges can be found in many development sectors: health,
agriculture, girls education, labor and the environment. In
health alone they include, among others, preventing and controlling a
range of communicable and non-communicable diseases; getting
children immunized; increasing the practice of family planning;
preventing the spread of AIDS; reducing drug abuse; improving diet and
nutrition; and encouraging more physical exercise. In addition,
there are policy-related behavioral outcomes which are critical such as
passage of new legislation or declaring new health policies.
Many
different approaches have been useful in the past, ranging from health
education and development support communication to social
mobilization. While there have been some successes, there has also been
enormous frustration at not being able to achieve more at a
faster rate. Social development programs, as a consequence, struggle
along - but with modest behavioral impact. In the health field,
for example, there is the continuing massive phenomenon of people
apparently knowing what they should do for better health but who fail
to act according to their best intentions or knowledge.
Conventional "Information-Education-Communication" (IEC)
programs in health have been able to increase awareness and knowledge
but have not been as successful at achieving behavioral results.
It is clear that informing and educating people are not sufficient bases
for behavioral responses. Behavioral impact will emerge only
with effective communication programs, purposefully directed at
behavioral goals, and not directed just at awareness creation,
or advocacy or public education.
Integrated
marketing communication (IMC) offers a dynamic, proven approach to
achieving behavioral results in health and other development programs.
The
private sector experience over 100 years in successfully using IMC with
consumer behavior (for products both awful and superb) points
to an approach applicable to health and social development. IMC begins
with the client/consumer and a sharp focus on the behavioral
result anticipated, clearly mapped out by practical market research or
situation analysis related to the desired behaviors. It
requires the integrated application of the disciplines of health
education, adult education, mass communication, social and community
mobilization, traditional media, marketing (including
village-level marketing traditions), advertising, public relations and
public advocacy, personal selling and counseling,
client/customer relations, and market research to the ultimate goal of
achieving behavioral results.
The World Health Organization
has successfully applied the IMC approach (referred to in WHO as
COMBI - "Communication for Behavioural Impact") in dealing with a
broad range of communicable diseases over the past ten years.
Your personal learning outcome: As a participant in a working group you will apply the IMC/COMBI planning method to develop an IMC/COMBI plan for a health or social development field of your choice.
For More Information
Program Administration: Stina Peterson, Program Manager, Office of Academic Initiatives and Global Programs, Phone: (212) 998-5099; Fax: (212) 995-4923; E-Mail: steinhardt.combi@nyu.edu
Academic Content: Dr. Everold Hosein, Senior Communication Advisor/Consultant, WHO: everold@gmail.com or Everold.Hosein@wmc.who.int