WORLD HEALTH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATES

WHCA has recently been assisting ECDC on the organisation of two workshops in Stockholm: Scientific Group Consultation Workshop (27-28 February) and Infectious Diseases and Environmental Change (29-30 March) 2007.

WHCA, with the WHO Regional Office for Europe, held a World Health & Environment Editors Network (WHEN) meeting in Vienna on 12-13 June 2007. The focus of the meeting was children’s environmental health in Europe.

WHCA assists WHO with the strategy and launch for World Health Day 2006.

Acknowledging the increasingly important role of communicators in shaping health policy choices, the World Health Professions Alliance (WHPA) is encouraging the creation of a World Health Editors’ Network (WHEN). WHEN will proactively ‘reach out’ to involve and support scientific/professional journal editors and other communicators in health reporting and advocacy action. On the occasion of the WHPA biennial meeting and the WHO 2006 World Health Assembly, this meeting will bring together editors and other communicators to further develop this network and in so doing obtain newsworthy stories related to the WHPA and WHA agendas.

In May 2006, WHCA coordinated the first ever Global Fund to Fight TB, AIDS and Malaria “media tour” to selected projects in Tomsk (Siberia) and Saratov (Volga River Area), in Russia. Joining the tour were health journalists from The Independent, The Lancet, The British Medical Journal, Die Zeit, Le Monde, TV2 Denmark & Hungary, Swedish Radio, Reuters, Associated Press and key Russian media.