New Challenges and Opportunities? Communication for HIV and Development

Published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP South East Asia HIV and Development Project), this 8-page paper aims to challenge the conventional wisdom in sectoral communication strategies by pointing out the opportunity for communication experts to collaborate with development sector and HIV/AIDS experts in devising effective communication that addresses root causes related to HIV epidemics and development. "By creating effective and innovative ways to communicating the development links with population movement and HIV vulnerability, hopefully it would effectively advocate the need for truly development responses to complement current programmes and responses."

The authors start the article by making reference to a Drum Beat email - a publication of The Communication Initiative: "In its issue 75 of 8 January 2001 'Development Status: communication implications', it stated that when one 'looks at recently released facts which, when taken together, appear to tell a depressing story about global progress in such areas as health, women and HIV/AIDS... The data also raise communication issues. Are governments, NGOs, Foundations and others investing in the most appropriate communication strategies? Can communication intervention contribute to making a significant difference?"

The authors address these questions by proposing two possible framworks in which to think about communication strategy and intervention.

1. Separation vs. interrelation

"The Drum Beat has highlighted several potential areas of impact for Communication, such as HIV/AIDS, poverty and the status of women. These areas are still perceived as separate from one another: there is a Communication strategy for women, another for HIV/AIDS, again another for poverty, etc. However, are these issues in reality independent one from another? One may argue that by keeping the Communication strategies for each of these areas separate, it allows for more focused targeting. Unfortunately, it also oversimplifies the reality of complex, interactive phenomena.

Fragmenting interrelated realities could be a recipe for ineffectiveness. Of course, the interrelations are difficult to analyse and it is a challenge to come up with Communication strategies that can describe them, but it is often already done in part, at least on a pairing basis, e.g. women and poverty. Although it is a major challenge, Communication could attempt to create or improve synergies between the separate efforts."

2. Symptoms vs. root causes

"Have the Communication strategies tended to address the symptoms rather than the root causes of risks of HIV infection?

There is a more general issue that societies and/or governments have great difficulties in confronting the root causes that contribute to the spread of HIV (e.g. poverty, environment, education, gender relations – rather than just women). This is generally a difficult and painful issue resulting in a reduced capacity (rather than
inability) to establish and implement effective programmes. The result is an epidemic continuing to spread in many developing countries. It is a crucial issue and Communication could certainly make a great contribution in this field. Once societies (or parts of societies) are ready to address these root causes, the process could be considerably facilitated with the appropriate support from Communication."

The authors believe that Communication experts can play an important, innovative and challenging role by tackling some of these issues as systematically as they did with health. They illustrate this briefly by providing some aspects of rural development and population mobility.

Rural Development

"As HIV/AIDS spreads to rural populations, it is clear that the health sector does not, in most cases, have the resources to reach out effectively to the rural populations. The health prevention messages, focusing for instance on use of condoms, are insufficient to increase the resilience of rural populations to the risk of HIV infection."

Population Mobility

"Similar reasoning can be applied to other sectors such as population mobility. By introducing a development perspective, one could go beyond the present information, education and communication which focus on migrants at border crossings and sex workers in hot spots. This would mean addressing the interactions between the people on the move and their communities of origin and destination, forming a holistic system.

Communication needs to address the entire mobility system, not components in isolation. However, the role of Communication is not limited to the systems aspect. Communication should also carry out advocacy directed at transport authorities and the private sector involved in transport so that their efforts to improve transport infrastructure and function can concurrently contribute to controlling the spread of HIV. Communication can not only be applied within transport sector in this fashion but also serve as a bridge between the transport sector and the National AIDS programmes.

Communication can further contribute to increased awareness of the interactions between agricultural, industrial and urban development policies which are factors in the level and intensity of population mobility. If and when policies and activities begin integrating HIV/AIDS concerns, Communication can contribute to the implementation of such integrated policies through appropriately designed information, education and advocacy strategies."

In conclusion, the authors write that there are numerous potential areas of impact for communication but also "several elements within each area, ranging from technical ministries to grass root organizations, where Communication can make a contribution to HIV vulnerability reduction. It would perhaps be appropriate for national AIDS authorities to consider issues raised in this paper together with development and communication experts and donors."