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A guide written primarily for DFID staff, highlighting the benefits, challenges and options when considering funding media/communications interventions. Includes sections on when to support such initiatives; what types of assistance to provide media organisations; how to appraise and monitor media interventions. Also supplies intervention frameworks to assist in identifying relevant interventions; advice on supporting balanced, responsible reporting; case studies; lists of relevant organisations, contacts within DFID, and further reading

In 1997, four US union health and safety training programmes entered into a three-year, multi-union learning action-research collaborative, the Self-sufficiency Research and Evaluation Pilot Project (SREPP). This initiative sought to build the research and evaluation capacities of the participating unions' training by offering a new model of participatory learning and action in the area of worker health and safety. Existing examples of participatory action research in this field have tended to concentrate on single worksites and start with a stakeholder labour management model. By contrast, this project has sought to foster participatory learning across programmes from a union perspective. It uses and expands on the peer-training model to institutionalise a new base of worker produced knowledge. During the last of SREPP’s four training workshops participants reflected on their experiences in the project through a series of participatory activities. In this article the background to the project is followed by the words of SREPP participants describing what it takes to learn about and do participatory evaluation in the context of union-based, worker-led health and safety training programmes. This includes a look at what was learned and how, as well as supports and barriers to participatory evaluation and the model that they have developed

This book examines the role of information management in health care. It is not specifically about developing countries, but parts may be relevant to evolving health care systems and information services in development. Part 1 looks at the context within which health care is delivered and examines the different users who have access to the knowledge base; Part 2 outlines the principles underlying the way health information resources and services are organized and managed; and Part 3 discusses the skills required to use the knowledge base effectively. Within this structure, individual chapters cover issues of particular relevance, such as marketing the information service, training the users, sources of health knowledge and searching the knowledge base

The paper offers an introduction to analysis of the policy process. It identifies and describes theoretical approaches in political science, sociology, anthropology, international relations and management. It then reviews five cross-cutting themes: a) the dichotomy between policy-making and implementation; b) the management of change, c) the role of interest groups in the policy process; d) ownership of the policy process; and e) the narrowing of policy alternatives. The paper concludes with a 21-point check-list of 'what makes policy happen'. A glossary of key terms is also provided. The key argument of the paper is that a 'linear model' of policy-making, characterised by objective analysis of options and separation of policy from implementation, is inadequate. Instead, policy and policy implementation are best understood as a 'chaos of purposes and accidents'. A combination of concepts and tools from different disciplines can be deployed to put some order into the chaos, including policy narratives, policy communities, discourse analysis, regime theory, change management, and the role of street-level bureaucrats in implementation

A brief but insightful report on lessons learned in malaria prevention. These are carefully explained and expanded in the text and include points such as the impact of urbanisation in Africa on malaria epidemiology; the need for simple, rapid but scientifically sound methods for assssing transmission; the role of risk area mapping in surveillance and project planning; and the need for careful operational research prior to implementing Insecticide Treated Net (ITN) programmes