CSR

This document reports the process and results of an 18-month public health communication program carried out in the Russian Federation by the Basic Support for Institutionalizing Child Survival (BASICS) Project, a global child survival project. In response to a request from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission in Moscow for assistance in combating a virulent diphtheria epidemic in the Russian Federation, a team of technical experts from BASICS and USAID visited Russia in March 1995. In effect, the BASICS program was designed to introduce social marketing to Russian counterparts, who would need to shift to a market orientation, see the Russian population as clients, and market to them accordingly. Working with BASICS in diphtheria control and other immunization efforts, Russians learn some of the marketing skills needed to play this new role, particularly the skills needed to conduct an information, education and communication campaign. The following chapter describes the program activities undertaken to implement the BASICS communication program in Russia; namely, 1) planning, 2) implementation, and 3) evaluation of actual social marketing campaigns in three Russian oblasts to support the immunization of high-risk groups with second and third doses of diphtheria vaccines and the marketing of social marketing itself within the Russian Ministry of Health. Additional chapters are devoted to the complementary effort to revise medical education and develop a Web site in the ministry. A list of program participants is given in Appendix A.