WORLD HEALTH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATES

Developing a World Health Editors Network

Acknowledging the increasingly important role of communicators in shaping health policy choices, the World Health Professions Alliance is encouraging the creation of health communicator networks on global, regional and national levels. These networks would proactively 'reach out' to involve and support key media in public health advocacy action by facilitating their early engagement as full partners in key health challenges, eg Avian Flu, Human Resource Development. Enhanced and sustained issue visibility thereby becomes a secondary gain of strengthening public health communication capacity. Such a developmental approach to communications has been found to significantly increase quality and quantity of news coverage by enhancing the capacity of communicators to understand and engage with issues over time[1].

On the global level a World Health Editors Network (WHEN) is proposed to model this approach. WHEN is envisioned as a way of addressing and 'bucking' global communication trends (see box 1). It is seen as a unique public health/media partnership that would provide an inter-professional public/private platform for strengthening the public health leadership and advocacy role of professional association journal and key global media health/scientist editors.

  Box 1 : Global health communication trends - The growing importance of communication as a determinant of health; - Increasingly competitive health information marketplaces, often dominated by hazard merchants; - Weakening presence of independent, evidence-based, ethical health information; and - Widening information gaps between and within countries with inequities in information/communication access closely parallelling and reinforcing social gradient differentials in disease and mortality patterns.

World Health Day 2006, with its theme of Human Resources for Health (HRH), provides an ideal springboard to WHEN's development. The cross-cutting HRH agenda provides a broad range of opportunities for inter-professional advocacy action. By convening this network, WHPA is acknowledging both the importance of communication as a determinant of health, and communicators as key members of the health workforce.

WHEN would work to identify ways to build on journalists' strengths and weaknesses in identifying opportunities for shaping health policy. A preliminary meeting of European editors in Helsinki in July 2005 noted that:

Journal strengths included perceived trustworthiness, editorial independence, and reliability as an evidence-based source.  Weaknesses included the proprietary nature of some journals, inaccessible technical language, intra-professional focus, healthcare rather than health focus, and the lack of input from patient users.  Many opportunities for enhancing journal involvement were noted, including reframing ways of reporting on different illnesses (eg development bottleneck of HRH), creating platforms for patient voices, developing professional media advocacy capacities, networking, and opportunistic action. (Apfel, F, WHCA, 2005)

Working in partnership with media will require new rules of engagement (see box 2).

Box 2 : Facilitating Media Presence in Health Communication Networks 1. Chatham House rules for meetings: This UK convention states that anything discussed at a meeting can be written about, but nothing can be attributed without permission. 2. Two-way communication agendas: technical information shared, feedback obtained. 3. Informal network: no legally binding commitments, no editorial control. 4. Agreed ethical standards[2]. 5. Respect for journalistic ways of working: eg the need to keep 'phone lines open' - mobile phones on silent, not switched off. 6. Newsworthy content: journalists should be able to go home with a story. 7. Ongoing connections: mutual contact possibilities.

Many media and single profession networks exist. WHEN would look to link these networks around a fresh public health agenda. Target partner groups would include WHPA association sponsored journals (ICN, WMA, FIP, etc), the International Press Institute (IPI), The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and key global media outlet health/science editors (IHT, FT, WSJ, LeMonde, etc.).

It is proposed to hold a scoping meeting in Geneva in mid March and then launch the WHEN on WHD 2006 (April 7) and have a first meeting in mid to late May.

Comments and questions to: Franklin Apfel at franklin@whcaonline.org

[1] WHO European Health Communication Network (EHCN) experience, 1997-2002
[2] See WHO EHCN Guidelines for Health Communicators drafted in partnership with IPI and IFJ.