The United Nations Children's Fund has reached an agreement with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs under which CCP will provide assistance on developing strategic communication programs to improve the lives of children in the developing world.

Under a three-year memorandum of understanding, the two organizations will combine their expertise to concentrate on UNICEF's five priority areas: childhood immunization, girls' education, child protection, integrated early childhood development and HIV/AIDS.

"We welcome the assistance of CCP as we tackle our priority areas in the developing world," said Edwin Judd, director of Programme Division, UNICEF. "Strategic communication is an essential tool in programs designed to reach children and their caretakers."

CCP will assist UNICEF in developing, implementing and monitoring communication interventions for behavior change at the request of UNICEF's field offices. CCP also will provide upon request formative research, materials development and an evaluation of the intervention to gauge its impact.

In addition, CCP's training course on strategic communication will be offered to the staff of UNICEF and the institutions it supports in developing countries, and CCP will make available to UNICEF the services of its Media/Materials Clearinghouse in Baltimore. The M/MC has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of primary health care communication materials from the developing world.

"We look forward to working together with UNICEF," said Jane Bertrand, professor of population and family health sciences at the Bloomberg School and director of CCP. "Combining our skills will lead to programs that can make a real difference in the lives of developing-world children."

UNICEF was created by the United Nations in 1946 to assist children and women recover in the wake of World War II. Its mission was broadened to address the urgent needs of children throughout the developing world.

With representatives in more than 30 countries, CCP is a pioneer in the field of strategic, research-based communication for behavior change and health promotion that helped transform the theory and practice of public health communication. The Bloomberg School of Public Health established CCP in 1988.