One of global health’s leading open-access journals has secured funding that will help keep it available to readers and authors while positioning it for its next chapter. 

Global Health: Science and Practice (GHSP), the flagship journal of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP), will receive $520,000 from the Gates Foundation to support a transition to more sustainable publishing infrastructure and maintain no-cost access for authors and readers for the next 22 months. 

Since its launch in 2013 with support from USAID, GHSP has provided a forum for implementation-focused global health evidence and experience: the kind of actionable knowledge that program practitioners, researchers, decision-makers and donors can readily use in real-world programs, policies and health systems. 

Unlike journals that focus primarily on discovery science, GHSP emphasizes what happens after evidence is generated: how it is used, adapted and applied to improve health outcomes. 

That focus has helped the journal reach more than one million readers annually and attract a global authorship base, with about 63 percent of authors coming from low- and middle-income countries. For many, GHSP has become a trusted source of practical evidence that informs decisions and strengthens programs. 

Following the end of USAID funding in 2025, CCP began exploring ways to sustain the journal for the long term while preserving what has made the journal distinctive. In a publishing landscape where many journals rely on author fees or expensive proprietary systems, GHSP has remained a diamond open-access journal, meaning it does not charge readers to access articles or authors to publish their work. 

The grant provides bridge funding as CCP moves GHSP toward a more sustainable future. The transition includes two key priorities: moving the journal to more sustainable, open-source publishing platforms that reduce operating costs, and expanding the journal’s governance by bringing on a partner institution from a low- or middle-income country. 

“GHSP is committed to free and open access to knowledge,” said Ruwaida Salem, GHSP’s managing editor. “This funding gives us the opportunity to move forward on some of our biggest priorities while making sure the journal remains available to the global health community.” 

The support will also allow GHSP to resume normal operations after months of uncertainty. 

“We’re excited to ramp our operations back up,” Salem said. “We’ll be able to move the remaining articles through our pipeline, publish new issues and, later this year, reopen the journal to new submissions.” 

CCP also sees an opportunity to make the journal’s leadership more representative of the field it serves. 

“Global health should reflect global perspectives,” Salem said. “Bringing on a partner institution from a low- and middle-income country isn’t about adding a new voice. Rather, it’s about recognizing and formalizing the central role that frontline researchers and practitioners have always played and ensuring they have an even greater role in guiding the journal’s future.” 

CCP is building a diversified, long-term sponsorship strategy for GHSP, seeking additional sponsors, both large and small, to sustain the journal. GHSP is welcoming the Gates Foundation as its first founding sustainability sponsor. To explore sponsorship opportunities, please contact the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs Business Development Team at ccpbd@jhu.edu. 

“Our goal isn’t to rely on a single funder,” said Debora B. Freitas López, CCP’s executive director. “We want to build a consortium of supporters who share our commitment to sustaining the journal over time. GHSP truly is a global good, and its future should reflect the global community it serves.” 

The post New Support Will Help Sustain Future of CCP’s Global Health Journal  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

When Rebecca Dineen thinks about what makes August Summers exceptional, she does not start with a strategy or a campaign. She starts with trust. 

Dineen, assistant commissioner for maternal and child health at the Baltimore City Health Department, has worked with Summers for nearly a decade through B’more for Healthy Babies, the citywide initiative recognized nationally for improving birth outcomes.  

She wrote a letter of support for Summers in nominating him for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Staff Excellence in Baltimore Public Health Practice Award, which he will receive today, because she has seen firsthand how he approaches public health practice.  

“He has a special combination of technical rigor and relational strength that allows people to feel heard, respected, and valued,” Dineen wrote in her nomination letter. 

At the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, and in his work across Baltimore, Summers has built a reputation as someone who listens first, understands context, and helps communities shape the solutions that affect their lives. 

The roots of that approach go back much further than his public health career. When he learned he was receiving the award, he thought of his family, especially his grandmothers, who were quiet but deeply connected to their South Carolina communities. 

“They were very service-oriented folks that saw the best in people, never asked for much, always were available,” he says. “That’s kind of where the value of the way that I work comes from.” 

For him, the recognition is meaningful because it reflects what he sees as the purpose of public health. 

“I just consider it service,” he says. “It’s what I would do no matter what job I had, what position I was in.” 

Summers carried that same sense of service into his public health career. At the start, communication was not the destination he imagined. He was drawn to health education and to a question that continues to guide his work today: How can we help people close the gap between where they are and where they want to be? 

Growing up, Summers saw the effects of chronic disease in his own family. He wanted to understand how public health could better help people reach the health goals they already had for themselves. 

“There are barriers to getting there, whether it’s knowledge or something else,” he says. “It’s usually a lot of something else.” 

For Summers, that “something else” is where communication matters most. Public health challenges are rarely solved by information alone. They require understanding people’s experiences, listening to what matters to them, and recognizing the expertise communities already have. 

“I want people to feel listened to,” Summers says. 

Listening, he says, is one of the most powerful tools a communicator has. 

“The more people feel listened to, the more they’re going to share,” he says. “You’re building trust. You’re getting more honesty.” 

The same principles shape the way Summers leads the domestic team at CCP. 

“What stands out about August is that the way he works with colleagues is the same way he works with communities,” says Tina Suliman, a senior program officer. “He listens, he asks questions, and he makes people feel valued. That’s not just a communication skill. It’s a way of leading.” 

Debora B. Freitas López, CCP’s executive director, sees those same qualities reflected in Summers' work across the organization. 

“August represents the very best of CCP and public health practice,” says Debora B. Freitas López, CCP’s executive director. “He understands that meaningful communication begins with listening and with truly valuing the experiences, strengths, and expertise of communities. He brings tremendous care and commitment to his work and to the relationships he builds. This recognition is richly deserved.” 

That way of working has been central to Summers’ work with B’more for Healthy Babies, where communication has been a core strategy from the beginning. Dineen credits Summers with helping sustain the communication approach that connects more than 200 partners across Baltimore around a shared goal of improving maternal and infant health. 

“He has made sure communication is one of the core strategies of B’more for Healthy Babies,” Dineen wrote. “Our communication work in BHB is what ties the 200+ partners and the many different technical areas of work together.” 

Over the years, Summers has worked on some of Baltimore’s most complex public health priorities, from maternal and child health to COVID vaccination, safe sleep, breastfeeding, immunization and congenital syphilis. Across these challenges, his approach has remained consistent: start by understanding the community. 

Dineen says this ability to center community is one of the qualities that makes Summers such a trusted partner.  

“He approaches public health practice in a way that elevates community,” she wrote. “He looks for what reflects the strengths, realities, and expertise of Baltimore communities.” 

For Summers, community is more than a strategy. It is the foundation of the work. 

“I think the community piece is at the heart of it,” he says. “There’s definitely love in it. I love what I do, I love the people.” 

That sense of connection has carried him through both the rewarding and difficult moments of public health work. 

“The love part, the community part,” he says, “it transcends all of the very difficult parts of public health.” 

The Excellence in Baltimore Public Health Practice Award recognizes a body of work built over years of partnership, listening, and service. 

It also recognizes something harder to measure: the trust Summers has built, one conversation at a time. 

The post How CCP’s August Summers Builds Trust Through Communication  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Public health emergencies demand quick action. But the ability to respond effectively often depends on work that happened long before a crisis began. 

Creating ways for communities to share what they know, need, and worry about before decisions are made can help shape a more effective response. A new World Health Organization guidance document on generating and using evidence for community protection during public health emergencies addresses how community perspectives can inform emergency response. It was developed with input from a global technical working group that included Danielle Naugle, PhD, a key social science researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. 

For Naugle, one theme came through clearly: Communities need to be part of emergency response from the beginning, not brought in after decisions have already been made. 

“The idea is not to respond for communities,” she says. “It’s to respond with them.” 

One recommendation that emerged from the group was the need for faster, qualitative approaches that allow responders to listen to communities during an emergency and understand their concerns, experiences and priorities. 

“It’s not just about collecting data about the community,” Naugle says. “It’s about engaging with the community from the beginning.” 

During an emergency, that can be challenging. Responders are often working under pressure and may need to make decisions quickly. But Naugle says that is exactly why relationships cannot be built only when a crisis occurs. 

“If you don’t have relationships in place, it’s difficult to get the work done,” she says. 

Work led by CCP in Guinea offers an example of why those relationships matter. During the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it took three months between when the first case was identified, and the first awareness campaign launched. This was because all processes had to begin from scratch, including outreach to and input from local communities. 

But in 2021, when the first Ebola case was officially identified in Guinea, it took the CCP team just 48 hours to get prevention messages on the air.  

CCP’s Shannon McAfee, who was part of that work in Guinea, says that when community organizations and health workers are already engaged, responders are not starting from zero. They have relationships to build on and channels for information to move in both directions. 

Across CCP’s work around the world, researchers and practitioners have built programs around understanding communities’ needs, concerns, and realities before designing solutions. 

The WHO guidance reinforces that approach in emergency settings: Community engagement is not something that begins when a crisis starts. It is part of preparing for one. 

As Naugle says, “You have to build those relationships continuously.” 

The post The Work That Happens Before an Emergency  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

As social and behavior change practitioners, we’re in the business of helping people make healthier choices. We study the determinants of health, we craft messaging and we design interventions meant to nudge, inform or inspire. But lately, I’ve found myself wrestling with a persistent and uncomfortable question: Is this enough?

There are days, especially when working in complex environments like Ethiopia, where the challenges faced by communities feel insurmountable. It can feel superficial to ask someone to focus on a single health behavior when they are already navigating deep economic pressure, systemic obstacles and cultural expectations. I’ve found myself wondering: At what point does behavior change become inseparable from the systems that shape people’s lives?

A few weeks ago, a moment in Southern Ethiopia crystallized this for me. I was facilitating a leadership and SBC training for health system actors from different zonal and district administrations. I’d been struggling with the gap between the language we often use – scale, impact, transformation – and the reality people were living every day.

During a reflection session, one of the participants looked up and said, “The training came at a time that I had almost given up, but having these discussions openly gave me the energy boost to continue doing what I do.”

His words stopped me. I’d assumed I was the one carrying the weight of the system. Instead, I realized everyone in that room was carrying it. We weren’t looking for easy answers. We were looking for enough hope to keep going.

That changed the way I thought about my role. Maybe my job isn’t to fix the entire system. Maybe it’s to create the conditions for small wins that help people keep showing up.

Over the years, whether I’ve worked in maternal health, malaria, nutrition, youth empowerment or leadership development, I have come to a singular, humbling realization: we organize development around sectors, but people organize their lives around, well, life.

A pregnant woman isn’t thinking about maternal nutrition as one piece of her day. She is thinking about feeding her family, getting to work, caring for her children, finding transportation and making ends meet. Health is woven into all of it.

Yet our programs often ask people to separate those realities into categories that make sense to us, not necessarily to them.

As I look ahead, I don’t pretend this is easy. Systems don’t change overnight.

But I keep coming back to that room in Southern Ethiopia.

The participant who thought he was alone was not alone.

Neither was I.

Maybe our job isn't to fix the entire system by ourselves. Maybe it's to better understand the realities people are already navigating and design with those realities in mind.

That's a much smaller ambition. But after that conversation in Southern Ethiopia, I'm beginning to think it may also be the more important one.

Biruk Melaku Ayalew is CCP's director of design and implementation in Ethiopia.

The post People Organize Their Lives Around Life appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

The young woman from rural Chibombo, in central Zambia, knew the nearby health center offered the services she needed. 

The challenge was feeling comfortable enough to walk through the door. 

Like many adolescents in Zambia, she worried that going to the clinic would tell people something she was not ready to share. A visit for family planning could mean running into adults from her community and facing questions, assumptions or judgment. 

“Mostly adults are at the clinic seeking family planning or other services, so it is a challenge,” she explained. 

Even entering the building could feel like an announcement: “Especially this building, when they see you enter here, they know that you are going to get family planning services on a particular day.” 

Through the WISH 2 project, the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and partners including Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia and Ipas worked closely with the Ministry of Health at their facilities to address a barrier that is easy to miss: services can exist, but people may still not feel comfortable using them.  

The solution was not a new clinic. It was a different way of opening the door. One day a month, just for young people. 

The project, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, supported the adaptation and implementation of Adolescent Wellness Days, dedicated times for young people to access sexual and reproductive health and other services in spaces designed specifically for them.

The approach, which CCP first used Luapula and Copperbelt provinces during its former Breakthrough ACTION work, is built on using existing health facilities, providers and community networks to address privacy and confidentiality needs by dedicating time at the clinic for youth, mostly on weekends when they’re less likely to run into an auntie or a neighbor.  

Service offerings include contraceptive counseling, HIV prevention and testing, mental health and psycho-social wellbeing, menstrual health and hygiene management, sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response, nutrition, physical activity, substance-use prevention and healthy relationship education. Given the breadth of services offered, WISH 2 hopes to make parents more comfortable encouraging their children to participate. 

In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, these interventions are being incorporated into existing health structures, with training and advocacy underway to fully integrate the work into routine service delivery for adolescents.  

Early pregnancy is a public health issue In Zambia, where surveys show that three in 10 adolescent girls aged 15–19 have begun having children. Meanwhile, a 2025 United Nations report found that nearly four in 10 new HIV infections in Zambia occurred among people aged 15–24. Adolescent girls and young women were three times more likely to acquire HIV than their male peers. 

“When we think about access to health services, we often start with a simple question: Are services available? But availability is only one part of the equation,” says CCP’s Malumbo Machimu, a social and behavior change advisor in Zambia. “Young people also need to feel safe, respected, and assured that they can seek care without judgment. Adolescent Wellness Days were designed around that reality by changing not just what services were offered, but how adolescents experienced those services.” 

For the young woman in Chibombo, the difference was not only the services she received. It was feeling that the clinic was a place where she belonged. 

Peer educators helped make that possible. By talking with young people in a way that felt familiar and approachable, they helped make conversations about sexual and reproductive health less intimidating. And less stigmatizing, something WISH 2 is prioritizing through its social and behavior change work. 

For a 16-year-old boy in the capital, Lusaka, having someone his own age to talk with changed the experience. 

On a normal day, he said, he would have stayed away from the clinic. The Wellness Day gave him a reason to go. There, he could ask questions, talk with a peer educator and access services, including HIV testing and condoms. 

“They don't just give you the services you desire,” he said. “They'll counsel you and teach you.” 

Health facilities changed more than just the schedule of services. On dedicated days, they strengthened outreach, and held activities such as sports, music, drama and poetry to make health services feel more approachable for young people. 

Over a six-month period, 146 Adolescent Wellness Days in 75 facilities reached more than 16,500 adolescents, including nearly 10,000 girls and more than 6,500 boys. 

At some facilities, those changes were translated to increased service use. In suburban Chawama, youth family planning clients increased by 20 percent during the Wellness Day period, rising from 117 to 140 adolescents. In neighboring Fumbelo, youth family planning clients increased from 49 to 299. 

The young woman from Chibombo received family planning services, chose to test for HIV, and left feeling that the experience was worth sharing with others. 

For the next Wellness Day, she said she will return and bring her friends. 

She knows exactly how she would describe it: “There will be different health services like giving family planning and testing for syphilis and HIV … and then they'll give health talks on top of that.  

“There will only be young people and no adults. That day is only for youth.” 

The post The Day the Clinic Became a Place for Young People  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

For many years, meat was not an everyday food for many Ghanaians. It was something families enjoyed during celebrations and religious holidays.

But Ghana is changing.

“Urbanization is speeding like a jet fighter,” says Emmanuel Fiagbey, executive director of Communication Initiatives for Change, a member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs global network.

As cities grow and incomes rise, eating patterns are changing too. Many people who never ate much meat are consuming more. Fiagbey points to one striking sign of that shift: dozens of truckloads of cattle arrive in Accra each day from across West Africa, a reflection of how quickly diets are changing.

That change is happening alongside another one. Noncommunicable diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, account for a growing share of deaths in Ghana.

Communication Initiatives for Change is working with CCP, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) and Meatless Monday, to adapt the global campaign for Ghana. Meatless Monday encourages people to choose meals without meat one day a week, for the health of people and the planet. As the movement has spread around the world, communities have adapted it to reflect their own cultures, food traditions and health priorities.

The work is part of a broader effort in which CCP is supporting partners in Ghana, South Africa and Indonesia to shape Meatless Monday around local contexts.

The campaign was founded in 2003 by Sid Lerner in partnership with CLF, which has helped provide the scientific foundation behind the effort. As the campaign spread to communities around the world, it became clear that success would look different in different places.

Beginning in 2016, CCP brought its expertise in social and behavior change communication to help countries adapt the campaign to their own contexts. The work evolved through research, collaboration and a process of learning and adaptation, as CCP and its partners worked to understand what it would take for Meatless Monday to succeed in different settings.

In Ghana, that has meant starting with what people already know.

The team began by listening to communities and identifying the groups that could help make the effort sustainable, including universities, faith-based organizations, young people, culinary professionals, and businesses.

When people asked what they should eat instead of meat on Mondays, the answer came from Ghanaian kitchens. The team worked with local chefs to identify dishes that could be prepared without meat, creating a booklet featuring foods from across the country.

The first Ghana Meatless Monday guide included 41 pages of meatless recipes. A new edition has expanded to 88 pages, featuring dishes from different regions and cultures.

“The audiences started asking: If you do not want us to eat meat on Mondays, then what dish is there that you will suggest for us to eat?” Fiagbey says.

The work has also meant building support among institutions that can help sustain the campaign beyond individual choices.

One focus has been the private sector, where workplace cafeterias offer an opportunity to make healthier meals part of everyday routines. That has not always been easy. Some businesses, particularly those connected to the culinary industry, have viewed Meatless Monday as a threat rather than an opportunity.

“Meatless Monday does not mean don’t eat meat at all,” Fiagbey notes.

Instead, the campaign encourages people to rethink how often meat appears on their plates and consider alternatives.

Similar efforts are underway across the three countries where CCP is supporting Meatless Monday, with partners exploring how schools, workplaces, and other institutions can help make the practice part of everyday life.

One company that has embraced the idea in Ghana is HPW Fresh and Dry, a fruit company with more than 1,000 employees. The company provides two hot meals a day for its workers through its workplace canteen and, after learning about Meatless Monday, it began working with the team to explore how meat-free meals could become part of its Monday offerings.

For Andrea Anschel, who leads the work for CCP, the appeal of Meatless Monday is its simplicity.

“One of the low-hanging fruits of this whole project is it’s just one day a week,” she says. “We all can do that.”

That simple approach has helped the campaign take hold in Ghana and other countries where it is being implemented. A weekly change feels achievable, and over time it can become part of a larger shift in how people think about food.

The lessons from Ghana are now helping shape the next phase of Meatless Monday’s global expansion.

In this latest phase, Meatless Monday has partnered with CLF and CCP to help countries build locally driven approaches using social and behavior change strategies. CCP was recently awarded a third phase of funding to continue supporting the work, with a focus on building the systems, resources and local leadership needed to sustain the initiative beyond the life of the project.

Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa are now serving as regional hubs, sharing lessons and resources through peer learning exchanges and helping neighboring countries explore how Meatless Monday can work in their own communities.

The goal is not to create one model that looks the same everywhere. It is to build a network where communities can learn from one another and develop approaches that fit their own realities.

“People can’t just take Meatless Monday off the shelf and know exactly what to do with it,” says Becky Ramsing, a senior program officer at the Center for a Livable Future. “In different countries and communities, it means different things. The guidance, the examples, the stories—those are what help partners shape it to fit their own context.”

For Meatless Monday’s Dana Smith, the future of the campaign depends on communities continuing to make it their own.

“The hope is that Meatless Monday becomes decentralized and other campaigns, initiatives and NGOs carry Meatless Monday far beyond what we could ever do from the hometown headquarters,” she says.

The post How Global Meatless Monday Movement Becomes Local appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Words shape how we understand behavior. They also shape how we work together to improve it. 

As behavioral insights become more deeply embedded in public health, professionals from multiple disciplines are increasingly collaborating to address complex challenges. But they are not always speaking the same language. 

A behavioral intervention. A nudge. An enabling environment. Social norms. 

These and other terms can carry different meanings depending on a person's discipline or area of expertise, making it harder to compare evidence, design programs and translate research into practice. 

A new Behavioural Insights Glossary for Public Health Practitioners from the World Health Organization aims to help address that challenge. Developed through an international collaborative process, the glossary provides shared definitions for 33 foundational concepts used across behavioral insights and public health.  

Among those who helped shape the resource is Uttara Bharath Kumar, senior technical advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) and a member of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights for Better Health comprises of 16 global experts in the field. 

The need for a shared vocabulary became clear even among the experts working on the glossary. 

“As we started talking about how we integrate behavioral science concepts into work at the country level, we discovered that even within our group there were so many differences in the way people saw or defined terminology that was frequently used in our world,” Bharath Kumar said. 

The goal was not to dictate how people should use language, she said, but to create a foundation for clearer communication. 

“Having a glossary to refer back to gives us a common starting point,” she said. “We all may still not agree but it allows people to say, ‘WHO defines it this way, but this is how we are interpreting it.’” 

The glossary was developed by WHO in partnership with University College London through a collaborative process that brought together experts from around the world, WHO staff across all six regions and public health practitioners to identify and clarify the terms most important to the field. 

Each of the 33 entries includes a definition, an explanation of how the term is used in public health practice and links to related concepts. The resource covers topics ranging from behavioral diagnosis and choice architecture to social norms, theory of change and enabling environments. 

For Bharath Kumar, the process itself was a reminder of why language matters. 

“What surprised me was how much discussion there was,” she said. “There were terms I thought would be no-brainers, and we didn’t agree.” 

The debate, she said, was a valuable part of the process, forcing experts to examine how they understood terms and how those definitions shaped their work. 

“I learned a lot from the debates and discussions we had,” she said. “It made me critically assess how I felt about a term and how I had experienced it in my work.” 

The conversations also reflected a broader evolution in the field. Behavioral economics, human-centered design, behavioral science and social and behavior change have often developed from different traditions, but they increasingly overlap in public health practice. 

“People come at it from different angles,” Bharath Kumar said. “But thinking of it more as a science rather than a ‘soft skill,’ a box where many people have placed it, gives it the importance it deserves.” 

That perspective resonates at CCP, where programs have long drawn on social and behavioral science, communication and community engagement to improve health outcomes around the world. Whether addressing vaccine confidence, family planning, malaria prevention or humanitarian response, understanding what influences behavior requires looking beyond the individual to the broader social, cultural and structural context. 

As behavioral science and social and behavior change continue to evolve, Bharath Kumar said, developing a common language will be essential to strengthening the field and helping practitioners, researchers and policymakers work together more effectively. 

“Medical science has terminology that is understood widely,” she said. “So why not behavioral science?” 

The post Building a Common Language for Behavioral Science  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Every morning in Sudan begins with uncertainty. 

For Tagwa Abdelati, a senior social and behavior change advisor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP), plans can change overnight. Roads close, electricity disappears, and communities are displaced again. Just when life begins to feel manageable, everything shifts. 

"You start to adjust to one thing," she said. "Then you wake up and find it isn't working anymore. Every day, we're trying to re-adjust." 

It would be easy to tell a story only about what war has taken away. 

But that wasn't the story Tagwa wanted to tell during the 2026 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit, held last month in Panama.  

Instead, spoke about what she and her colleagues are learning as they listen to communities across Sudan, through CCP's involvement in the WISH2 project, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and led by the International Planned Parenthood Foundation. 

Since conflict erupted in April 2023, Sudan has become what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 30 million people need assistance. Millions have been displaced. Women and girls face increasing barriers to sexual and reproductive health services and heightened risks of gender-based violence. 

Those realities are impossible to ignore. 

But Tagwa challenged Summit participants to look beyond what conflict destroys and ask a different question: 

“What happens to social norms, relationships, and behaviors when everyday life is turned upside down?” 

To find out, the WISH2 team didn't begin by designing an intervention. 

They started by listening. 

Using a human-centered design approach, the team brought together women and men, young people, people with disabilities, internally displaced people and host communities, community leaders, health workers and government partners from three regions of Sudan. They wanted to understand not only what communities had lost, but how people were responding to a rapidly changing reality. 

What emerged wasn't simply a list of needs. It was evidence that social norms were already shifting. 

As economic pressures reshape family life, husbands are becoming more involved in reproductive health decisions and accompanying their wives to health services. Families are having more open conversations about birth spacing. In some households, women must travel to work while men stay home to care for children and manage daily responsibilities, a complete reversal of longstanding custom. 

For SBCC practitioners, those changes matter. 

Social norms influence how families make decisions, seek health care, share power and support one another. When those norms begin to shift, even during conflict, they create opportunities to strengthen healthy behaviors and build on changes that communities are already making themselves. 

The work also revealed what remains difficult to talk about. 

Although gender-based violence and conflict related sexual violence have increased dramatically during the conflict, it did not surface openly during the earliest conversations Tagwa had with communities. Only later, when social service workers and providers joined the process did those experiences begin to emerge. 

For Tagwa, that reinforced one of the project's most important lessons, that listening takes time. 

Like many of her colleagues, Tagwa has lived through the same uncertainty as the communities she serves. She recently returned home to Khartoum, after three years seeking shelter in safer parts of Sudan, navigating the same disruptions, displacement and instability that have reshaped daily life across the country.  

Her trip to Panama almost didn’t happen. She left days early to ensure she was able to get out, taking four flights to make her way to Panama City. 

"I consider myself one of the lucky people," she said. "But I'm lucky, and I'm also suffering." 

Even so, she has witnessed remarkable acts of care. 

Young people have organized neighborhood kitchens to help feed displaced families and those who remained inside the war zones, initiatives primarily paid for with contributions from people in safer parts of Sudan and outside the country. Communities have pooled resources to buy medicine. Neighbors have stepped in to support one another when formal systems could not. 

For Tagwa, those moments offer another reminder that crisis does not only reshape infrastructure. It reshapes relationships. 

And for SBCC practitioners, recognizing those shifts is just as important as recognizing communities' needs. 

“Even in the hardest times,” Tagwa told those assembled, “change is already happening. Our role is to listen, support, help and direct to shape that change in ways that build dignity, trust and hope.” 

The post Looking Beyond Crisis: What One Sudanese SBCC Practitioner Is Learning About Change appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

In Daajir, a rural settlement for internally displaced families in southwestern Somalia, many of whom fled drought and insecurity, daily life is shaped by scarcity. Years of prolonged dry spells have eroded livelihoods, deepened food insecurity, and strained fragile health services. 

For women, the crisis also limits control over their reproductive health, as survival often takes priority over preventive care. 

Leyla, 26, is a mother of seven. For years, she faced repeated unplanned pregnancies while managing a large household under difficult conditions. Her health declined, and the demands of daily life made it hard to keep up with short-term contraceptive methods. 

In Daajir, access to reproductive health services is shaped by distance, limited resources, and social norms. Decisions about childbearing are often influenced by partners and relatives, and misinformation can discourage use. Leyla’s husband was initially hesitant, reflecting common concerns in the community. Oral contraceptive pills also proved difficult for Leyla to manage consistently amid illness, fatigue, and constant caregiving. 

Through the WISH2 program in Somalia, implemented by partners including the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP), community health workers began holding regular discussions about healthy birth spacing and available contraceptive options.  

CCP’s role focuses on addressing the social and gender norms that shape these decisions. Working with local leaders, community health workers created space for open conversation and questions. 

Leyla attended one of these sessions and was referred to a nearby health facility within the WISH2 network. There, a trained provider offered confidential counseling. After discussing her experience with pills, Leyla chose to switch to a long-acting contraceptive implant. 

“I finally felt calm when I understood my options,” she said. “This method helped me focus on my family again.” 

Follow-up was a key part of the process. Community health workers visited Leyla five times after her appointment, checking on her, answering questions and reinforcing key information. They also engaged her husband and relatives, helping to address concerns and build support over time. 

With a method that suits her circumstances, Leyla can now space her pregnancies and begin to recover physically. Her stress has decreased, and she has felt better able to care for her children and manage daily responsibilities. She also gained a stronger sense of control over her choices. 

Leyla’s experience reflects a broader approach that connects community outreach with accessible, quality services.  

“Our project focuses on interventions that go beyond addressing knowledge gaps in reproductive health,” said Mohamed Gelle, who works for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) as part of WISH2 in Somalia. “We deliberately identify and tackle the underlying social and gender norms that act as barriers to uptake and to the overall wellbeing of women and girls.” 

In settings like Daajir, where access is limited and needs are high, this kind of coordinated approach can make a difference. “By combining community engagement, respectful care, and ongoing support, programs can help ensure that women have the information and services they need to make decisions about their own health,” said CCP’s Alfayo Wamburi. 

“For Leyla, that meant moving from uncertainty to a greater sense of stability. It began with a conversation and continued with support that met her where she was." 

The post One Mother’s Journey to Reclaim Control in Crisis-Affected Somalia  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

A Grammy-winning musician walked into a room full of social and behavior change professionals. 

And somehow, it made perfect sense. Because change rarely happens through campaigns alone, but through the stories that make them human. 

During the 2026 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama City last month, co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) and the Centre for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI), Panamanian singer, songwriter, actor, lawyer, and activist Rubén Blades joined NYU professor Carlos Chirinos for a conversation that challenged attendees to think differently about how change happens. 

Chirinos framed the discussion around an idea familiar to SBCC practitioners: while the field has long relied on carefully planned, evidence-based interventions, it has paid less attention to the influence of artistic works that emerge organically through popular culture. Blades' music, he suggested, demonstrates how songs and stories can shape social norms and values, not because they were designed as behavior change campaigns, but because they resonate with people's lived experiences. 

For decades, Blades has written songs that explore family, poverty, migration, dictatorship, corruption and identity. His music has sparked conversations across Latin America that no communication strategy could have designed. At the Summit, he reflected on why those stories continue to resonate, and what they can teach a field built on helping people change. 

At the center of the conversation  was Amor y Control, the deeply personal song Blades wrote after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. As he left the hospital one day, he witnessed another family in crisis. Rather than writing only about his own experience, he transformed a private moment of grief into something larger. 

"My family's pain became the pain of all families," he said. 

The song has endured for more than three decades because it is not only about loss. It is about love, resilience and the quiet solidarity that carries families through crisis. 

For SBCC professionals, it was a reminder that communication does not always begin with a strategy. Sometimes it begins with recognition, with someone hearing their own life reflected back at them. 

Blades described himself not as a writer of messages or moral lessons, but as an observer. His songs, he said, are meant to reflect life, not instruct it. 

That distinction ran through the conversation. Speaking in Spanish throughout the session, Blades emphasized that culture shapes how people understand themselves and each other. Stories, music and art create space for reflection in ways that data and directives often cannot. 

He also called for what he described as a "school for unlearning," a space where people could let go of harmful ideas about machismo, racism, sexism and homophobia that are often passed down across generations. 

"We need schools not only to learn," he said. "But to unlearn." 

He traced that idea back to his grandmother. 

"We are not poor," she told him. "We just don't have money. Poor is the person who has nothing in their head and nothing in their soul." 

As the session ended, the audience rose for a standing ovation. Rubén Blades hadn’t sung a note. 

The post Stories Change People: Rubén Blades on Music, Meaning and Behavior Change  appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.