The Covid pivot sounds like a new dance craze doesn’t it? It’s not, but we’re having fun ‘pivoting’ our face-to-face training to delivering engaging online services for clients.

Our horizons expanded recently with our first bilingual Policy Briefs webinar for a new client, The Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH). The session: Evidence to Action: How to Write a High Impact Policy Brief was delivered by a CommsConsult team hosting from Zimbabwe, Egypt, Scotland and England. Rather brilliantly, we did not experience any technological hiccups despite an ambitious range of participative methods, simultaneous translation, and multiple locations!

CanWaCH is a not-for-profit organization that unites Canadian organizations working on women and child’s health. They support around 100 non-governmental organizations (NGOS), academic institutions, health professional associations and individuals working in around 1,000 communities worldwide. They learned about CommsConsult’s training work through Research to Action, a platform that is owned and managed by us. They wanted, at short notice, a session on Policy Briefs to open their inaugural training Academy which took as its theme “Recovery, Renewal and Resilience”. 

The session, described by the client as ‘by far the most successful’ of the Academy’s three days of practical training and workshops, was designed to cover the ‘How, What, When, Where and Why?’ of using Policy Briefs to communicate with policy actors. It drew on more than a decade of practical training in this topic provided by CommsConsult teams. 149 members signed up for the session. 

WHY HEALTH?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identify health as a priority for 2030 but progress has been slowed by the covid19 pandemic. A WHO report declared that the health and rights of children and adolescents are under threat. Episode Four of the podcast series we produced for the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme ‘Adolescents in Crisis: Unheard Voices’ shines a light on the mental health crises of young people forced to flee their homes.

Women’s health too, is disproportionately affected by poverty and politics. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) claims in its new report that the pandemic has contributed to increased gender inequality in health and threatens women’s development and well-being in the Americas.

We know there is a critical gap between knowledge generated on global health and its use by policy actors and decision makers. The Policy Brief, a short document that presents evidence in a succinct and meaningful way for these audiences, can be a powerful tool to bridge the gap. 

Reflecting on the session, the client said: “The team at CommsConsult went above and beyond to execute a successful and engaging workshop on how to write a high impact policy brief. This session was by far the most successful thanks to the dedication and all hands on deck approach from the team at CommsConsult. They delivered a high quality, engaging, and informative workshop within our budget and on a very tight timeline. Our team, as well as our members and participants, were beyond impressed with the content, expert facilitation, and overall execution of the workshop by CommsConsult. 

We loved the collaboration with CanWaCH and their members, doing important work around the world – and we learned lots about facilitating multilingual webinars! Laura ffrench-Constant, a member of our team, reflected on some of those lessons in a blog on Research to Action.

If you’d like us to help you and your teams communicate the results of your work – or to communicate more effectively to have bigger and better results – contact us! We’d love to hear from you. To keep in touch with the work that we do, subscribe to our e-newsletters (scroll to the bottom to find the ‘Keep in Touch’ button).

We look forward to hearing from you.