Creating impact: Trainers and participants posing for a photo during the Mercy Malaysia training session.
Healthcomm, a joint initiative by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Unicef, is inviting organisations to join forces to create a greater impact on community health.
Based at the varsity’s Centre for Research in Media & Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Healthcomm aims to empower the health sector and the public through awareness and training programmes.
Recently, a training session for 22 Mercy Malaysia officers was held in Kuala Lumpur.
Led by health communication experts Assoc Prof Dr Emma Mirza Wati Mohamad and Dr Arina Anis Azlan, the training focused on integrating social behaviour change communication (SBCC) strategies to strengthen humanitarian programmes.
SBCC plays a crucial role in humanitarian efforts by ensuring clear communication during intervention programmes, engaging communities, and promoting sustainable behaviours for long-term resilience.
Emma Mirza Wati, who is also Healthcomm director, said the training held from Feb 17 to 20 was designed to equip participants with practical SBCC strategies that can be directly applied to their humanitarian work.
“By fostering engagement, collaboration and strategic communication, we aim to strengthen the impact of humanitarian programmes on crisis response, recovery and long-term resilience,” she said in a press release.
During the interactive sessions, Mercy Malaysia participants were exposed to situation analysis, target audience profiling, strategic intervention design, and communication and message development techniques.
The training concluded with monitoring and evaluation methods to measure programme impact for effective reporting.
Mercy Malaysia senior programme officer Christina Nadia said her favourite part of the training was the group activities, which were fun and engaging.
Agreeing, her colleague, senior strategic humanitarian development officer Shoji Endo said he enjoyed the interaction and teamwork.
For details on Healthcomm, email emmamohamad@ukm.edu.my
