Population & Health Materials Working Group Meeting Minutes Monday, May 18, 1998 Population Reference Bureau Washington DC

Action Items (please complete as necessary)

  • Send the name and e-mail address of your webmaster to Peggy D’Adamo
  • Create your list of new and upcoming materials and let Peggy know when you have posted them on your website. Only AVSC, INTRAH/PRIME and JHU/CCP have posted a list of materials.
  • Contact Brenda Rudder of FHI at 919-544-6979 or brudder@fhi.org if you have comments on the translation glossary she is in the process of revising
  • Consider organzing one of the sessions mentioned in the notes on the Internet Meeting. Contact Peggy D’Adamo with your ideas.
  • Review the list of PHMWG member organizations. If your organization is incorrectly listed, contact Elizabeth Oliveras of JHPIEGO.
  • Review the updated list of Listservs relevant to PHN and contact Peggy D’Adamo with corrections or additions.
  • Send in any newly published materials to POPLINE for include in the Reproductive Health Training Materials Collection. Go to http://www.med.unc.edu/intrah/tmdb/input.html on the INTRAH web site for more information.

Young Adult Reproductive Health Training Programs and Curricula

Nancy Newton of the Focus project gave a presentation about a meeting sponsored by Focus which was held in February 1998. The proceedings of the meeting will be mailed out. The meeting also produced an annotated bibliography of training curricula for young adults. The bibliography needs more materials produced in developing countries that may be program or project specific. If you are aware of such materials, please contact Focus.

Young adults were defined as people aged 10-24. The meeting reviewed all young adult reproductive health training curricula–what exists and what is still needed. It will be the starting point for collaboration among agencies involved in training. Many non cooperating agencies were represented at the metting: SIECUS, Planned Parenthood USA…etc.

Materials covered include:

  • Family Life Education
  • STDs and HIV
  • Training of service providers
  • Electronic media

Characteristics of a good curriculum:

  • It must be fun
  • It should be comprehensive and focus on self-esteem and gender equity
  • Research shows that effective curricula are narrowly targeted to specific behaviors.
  • It must focus on skills and provide practice
  • Value-free training (most curricula are not value-free)
  • Adaptation: How can it be adapted? What is culturally appropriate? What is the core part of a curriculum that cannot be changed? Not a lot of research has been done on identifying core curriculum elements.
  • Need for supportive environment that also includes parents, the community, schools

More Research Needed:

  • On developing country curricula
  • On focusing on specific skills vs. taking a broad approach
  • On identifying the core curriculum elements
  • On costs and cost effectiveness
  • On electronic media: what are its advantages, when is it appropriate, when does it work best
  • Nutrition is a key RY need of young adults that is often overlooked

Focus will convene follow-up groups to address:

  • What needs to be done to insure that specific needs of youth are addressed in reproductive health services?
  • What needs to be done to create a supportive environment for young adult reproductive health training?

For online copies of the Focus Key Elements papers, see www.pathfind.org/focus.htm.

INTRAH/PRIME Sourcebook for Curriculum Development

The Sourcebook is a reference for developing new curricula or updating existing curricula. It is not a prototype curriculum. It includes 8 modules; 6 of them are completed along with a users’ guide. It is based on the collective experience of INTRAH, PATH, the American College of Nurse Midwives and IPAS. It is designed for experienced trainers and curriculum developers.

Characteristics

  • Integrated reproductive health care model which covers pregnancy, post-abortion care, STI prevention, family planning and other reproductive health services
  • It is structured around jobs performed by providers such as counseling, education clients, providing family planning services, maternal/newborn care, post-abortion care, reproductive health services (including adolescents, gynecology, STIs, cancer, infertility, FGM, etc.)
  • In-process: Modules #7-Working with Other Reproductive Health Workers and #8-MAQ.
  • It emphasizes training for performance on the job

How modules are organized:

  • Each module provides detailed information about a specific job.
  • Each job is broken down into major tasks
  • Each task is broken down into knowledge and skills needed
  • Each task includes a content outline and list of skills
  • Each module includes knowledge assessment questions and skills assessment tools
  • Each module has annotated references
  • The Users’ Guide covers introductory information, techniques for designing training, plans for applying skills on the job, a glossary.

The Sourcebook includes all the latest reproductive health standards. It is currently available in English, and will be available in French and Spanish. It can also be provided on diskette in MSWord. It may eventually be made available in other formats. For additional information, contact Cathy Murphy at INTRAH/PRIME.

Internet Meeting Evaluation and Follow-Up

The PHMWG’s second conference on the Internet was held January 26-7, 1998 at JHU. The meeting was well attended and focused on how different groups are making Internet-based resources more accessible to the developing world, and the approaches and applications that work best in this context. It also tried to address what applications might be appropriate 2-5 years from now for use in developing countries. Over 50 people filled out the conference evaluation which can be found HERE.

Statistics
Maria Busquets suggested that each cooperating agency collect on a semi-annual basis information (both quantitative and anecdotal) on how it communicates with the field. How is this cost effective? What case studies or examples do agencies have that show how they world with the field? What are the number of hits to each home page from developing countries?

Feedback on the Conference
The following comments were made:

  • Terminology and technology do change; bi-annual meetings like this one do fill a need.
  • Next time we should discuss the feasibility of holding these kinds of meeting in developing countries.
  • Q&A; sessions with the developing country participants were very helpful; because it gives us feedback on how we are reaching that audience. The participation of the private sector person was also helpful.
  • Next time we should consider expanding the event to include electronic media (CD-ROMs, etc.), not just Internet.
  • We should set up a list-serv for cooperating agency webmasters to communicate with each other. Peggy D’Adamo will collect the names and e-mail addresses of all CA webmasters and Casey O’Brien of JHU/CCP will send out an initial e-mail to them.
  • Next time we should focus more on programmatic issues–what people are putting on the web and how they are doing it.
  • We should conduct surveys of developing country access to the web and share them among ourselves.

Maria Busquets suggested that this group organize a series of 1/2 day or full day smaller events, focused on specific topics. We agreed to go back to our agencies and propose that each group (or groups working together) sponsor and organize an event. The topics suggested were:

  • How to set up an intranet
  • Authoring CD-ROMS
  • Distance Learning
  • Listserv Moderation
  • Multimedia Presentations
  • Live Data Generation and Analysis
  • Using the Internet for Information Dissemination (Larry Hartke/Census Bureau)

Please talk this over and get in touch with Peggy D’Adamo (410-659-6256) or mdadamo@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu to volunteer to plan a session. Sessions could be conducted by people from outside our network.

Translation Glossary Update & Promotion

A new version of the glossary is underway–Version 3.0 of FamPlan. Brenda Rudder of FHI asked that each agency review its copy of the glossary and return any comments to her by the end of May. If you need a copy or want an electronic version, contact her at 919-544-6979 or brudder@fhi.org. Brenda will supply your organization with one copy. It is your responsibility to make additional copies. She asks that you:

  • Verify the term and acronym for couple years protection (CYP)
  • Check your own organization’s terms and make changes directly on the copy with a colored pen/pencil
  • Put new terms on a separate sheet of paper. Indicate if the term is a preferred term or synonym
  • If you have not contributed terms in the past, you can still do so. If there are existing terms in the glossary that you would like to identify as preferred by your organization, indicate on the glossary with a colored pen/pencil
  • Add notes to clarify the use of any term
  • Use the attribute of language or region (EX: fhi pref/Mexico)

PHMWG Web Site Statistics
For detailed usage statistics for November 1997-May 1998, see http://www.med.jhu.edu/stats3.htm. This report was generated on May 13, 1998. The statistics do not cover pages at sites other than JHU. The site continues to receive between 1000-2000 visits/month. A significant number of requests do come from developing countries. The most requested pages, in addition to the home page, are the Internet conference proceedings and the meeting minutes.The statistics indicate that the site is useful to its members and to others working in international population, health and nutrition.

Reproductive Health Training Materials Collection

  • Organizations that produce training materials on topics in reproductive health that are relevant to developing country situations are invited to contribute their materials to POPLINE for inclusion in the Reproductive Health Training Materials Collection (RHTMC). The Reproductive Health Training Materials Collection is a project administered by INTRAH.
  • The deadline for submitting materials to the Reproductive Health Training Materials Collection is September 1, 1998. POPLINE must receive the completed input form and one complete copy of the item. For directions on how to submit materials and the input form, go to http://www.med.unc.edu/intrah/tmdb/input.html on the INTRAH web site.
  • POPLINE edits existing records one a year. If you would like to make changes in existing records, the completed input form must also be received by September 1, 1998.
  • To search for materials that are part of the collection, do a text word search on the following phrase in the source field of the POPLINE CD-ROM: RH Training Materials

Administrative Items
The Men’s Sub-Group of the USAID Gender Working Group approached this group about posting materials on men’s participation on our website. They would prepare the materials and we would simply put them up. We agreed that this would be an excellent way to begin to get lists of materials by subject on the web site.

Next Meeting: October 19, 1998
The next regular meeting of the group will be held on October 19, 1998 at JSI in Arlington. The tentative agenda will include:

  • Discussion of development of a list of translators & medical reviwers A number of organizations expressed an interest in seeing this group develop and post on the website lists of recommmended translators and medical reviewers for the following languages: French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian.
  • Collaborative Distribution
    Is there a way to find groups to distribute materials for you in-country? Are there materials that would be better distributed as a package? How would this be done? What sort of labor and costs would be involved?
  • Mailing Lists.
    Also, please come prepared to discuss your organization’s mailing lists. How many lists do you have? How many and what kind of people are on the lists? Do you list individual names? Can you target certain types of people? Do you share your mailing lists? If so, what is your policy?