Online Conference This Week: Social Marketing for Health in the Developing World

Monday, March 10. 2008

The Private Sector Partnerships One project (PSP-One) and the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Population and Reproductive Health are hosting a global online conference on social marketing in the developing
world from March 10-17, 2008. The conference is open to all interested professionals.

Participants will share ideas, results and lessons learned with social marketing professionals. They'll listen to or read presentations on Behavior Change Communications approaches, What’s New in Social Marketing, and Building Effective Public Private Partnerships. And there is an Expert Exchange Forum featuring thought-leaders in the field of social marketing from big players in this field: Abt Associates Inc., AED, Constella Futures, DKT, HLSP, and PSI.

The PSP-One project hosted its first online conference of this sort in the fall of 2007, and had an amazing turnout: 450+ participants from nearly 70 countries. This event has over 600 participants subscribed as of today, the first day of the event--from at least 60 countries.

These numbers are fantastic, in this sector. I think it's evidence of a shift we're seeing in the international development field towards a willingness to interact online. (A contributing factor is certainly that donor organizations like USAID are stepping out of their comfort zones and are willing to support and participate in these kinds of events.)

This particular USAID-funded project has focused a lot of attention online over the past 4 years, and now has a very active web site that houses a robust community library and a growing database of private sector projects that help professionals learn and connect. Forum One has the pleasure of working with Abt Associates on this long-term initiative.

Feel free to join in on the discussions this week if this is a topic that interests you!

Posted by Suzanne Rainey in Global Health at 13:32 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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Suzanne, thanks for blogging about this event. The online conference was a huge success, with nearly 1,000 participants (more than double last year's attendance) from more than 70 different countries and 300 organizations working on social marketing around the globe. PSP-One Director Ruth Berg noted that one of the goals of the conference was to "trigger an exchange of ideas from practitioners operating in very different contexts." I think that goal was surely met.

#1 Brian Pagels (Homepage) on 2008-03-19 10:06 (Reply)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.