Communication @ the Center is the theme of this year’s 2011 Conference of the International Communication Association. The theme highlights the centrality of communication scholarship by encouraging panels that identify core components of critical challenges and issues, and explore the role of communication studies in addressing them. The role played by information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the process of health communication cannot be understated. While ICTs hold great potential for improving knowledge management, supplying access to ICTs is not enough: information needs to be practical, easy-to-use, and locally relevant.

Emerging Mobile Technologies

A pre-conference to the Communication @ the Center was the Seamlessly Mobile: Mobile Communication @ a Crossroads, held from May 25-26, 2011. Already providing a venue for innovative scholars from around the world who are doing research in the area of mobile communication, the pre-conference also created an opportunity to discuss the challenges that face the integration of the internet into mobile phones not only for users, but for those doing research on mobile communication.

Members of the Center for Communication Program, Knowledge for Health Project, presented Applying Mobile Technologies to Improve Maternal and Infant Health in Rural Uttar Pradesh, India at the pre-conference. As part of a multi-country study, the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project conducted a qualitative needs assessment of health information needs in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. While the focus was on the government’s public health system, a special effort was made to understand the health information needs of ASHAs, who are grassroots health workers at the village level.

Healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies is an essential way of creating stronger health outcomes worldwide. It is an approach to family planning service delivery that supports women and couples in making informed decisions about delaying a first pregnancy until age 18, as well as timing and spacing subsequent pregnancies for improved health benefits for both mother and baby. Some researchers have concluded that 1.8 million under-five deaths could be averted annually if all pregnancies were spaced 36 months from the preceding birth.

The Extended Service Delivery Project, a Pathfinder-led USAID project, recently launched the Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy (HTSP) Toolkit on Knowledge for Health while USAID just announced the release of a new HTSP eLearning course.

Today is World Malaria Day! The theme of the fourth World Malaria Day - Achieving Progress and Impact - encourages the international community's renewed efforts in making progress towards zero malaria deaths by 2015.In keeping with this year’s theme, we would like to highlight the Voices for a Malaria-Free Future (Voices) project at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP).

I am the mother of a teenager, living in a text-obsessed world of communicating by “LOL, OMG, and 2GTBT”. I even have to admit that I’ve succumbed to the ease of texting “IM outside” when I arrive at school to pick him up – or more frequently “Where R U?” Hmmm. What’s up with that? So it brought joy to my heart when I visited the Knowledge for Health (K4H) Learning Center in Salima, Malawi, and experienced texting in a whole new way--in a purposeful way-- better yet, in a life saving way.