Workshop held on Leadership in Strategic Communication

“Mothers are the key health service providers in Odisha. Design comprehensive communication strategies for capacity building of the mothers and the community; and, put in place an institutional mechanism to foster those activities”, said Chief Secretary Sri Gokul Chandra Pati while addressing a State level workshop on Leadership in Strategic Communication organized in the premises of hotel Swosti Premium in Bhubaneswar.

Sri Pati added that there is lack of awareness and appropriate knowledge about health, nutrition, sanitation, pregnancy and other common ailments at community level. With increasing awareness and knowledge, many of the public health concerns and diseases can be substantially mitigated.

Chief Secretary has directed Health & Family Welfare Department to prepare integrated awareness building messages on health, nutrition & sanitation and adopt multi-pronged  approaches for capacity building of PRI representatives, NGOs, NSS volunteers, mothers and other health service providers at grass root level.

Director National Health Mission, Odisha Mrs. Roopa Mishra in her opening address said that expenditure in health communication in fact becomes an investment for improving community health and reducing IMR & MMR. She added that partnership with DFID, TMST and UNICEF in this matter has been extremely helpful and with their collaboration the State Institute of Health & Family Welfare (SIH&FW) has been developed as a center of excellence for training and awareness in maternity as well as public health programmes.

The five-day long workshop from 23 rd March to 27th March was organized for strategic reflection and planning for shaping the future health of Odisha. The internationally acclaimed resource persons like Dr Benjamin V. Lozare and Ms Uttara Bharat Kumar imparted training on designing of communication strategies.

The best practices from other Indian States and countries abroad were also discussed and shared in the workshop. Secretary Textiles & Handloom Ms. Chitra Arumugam, Director SIH&FW Dr Bijaya Mohapatra, DFID Odisha Team Leader Mrs. Supriya Patnaik, the experts from UNICEF, Subject experts from SIH&FW along with senior officers from School & Mass Education, Women & Child Development and Higher education participated the workshop.