One Stop Health takes campaign to Environment Ministry
Jordan Times
March 1, 2007
By Cheryl Haines
AMMAN — Environment Minister Khalid Irani and ministry employees were introduced to the Communication Partnership for Family Health Programme’s (CPFH) recently launched public health campaign on Thursday.
Yesterday’s conference held at the ministry entitled, “Family Health and
Environment,” featured CPFH’s “One Stop Health” and “Haytee Alaa” (My life
is better…plan, decide, commit) campaigns, which were enacted as part of the
larger public health initiative, “My Health, My Responsibility.”
“This meeting encourages a healthy quality of life to all family members,
providing informative and accurate health messages,” Irani said at the
conference.
“I hope we can build a partnership together, through which we can link and
sponsor each other through our ongoing campaigns,” he added.
The “One Stop Health” booth has been operating out of various locations
around the Kingdom since early December, including Safeway, Mecca Mall and the
Dunes Club in Amman.
Yesterday, the minister and various employees availed of the many
health-related services the booth offers, including a body mass index (BMI) and body fat
percentage indicator and blood pressure measurement.
“We always live without checking our health. I may have problems without
even knowing about it, for example, maybe my blood pressure. This booth can give
us a good overview of our health,” Bilal Shqarim from the ministry’s outreach
department told The Jordan Times as he awaited his turn to have his BMI
calculated.
The creation of a healthy living environment and the adoption of a healthier
lifestyle is one and the same, Country Director for Save the Children Jordan
Dennis Walto told The Jordan Times.
“It made sense that Save the Children and CPFH would partner with the
Ministry of Environment in our public health initiatives,” he added.
Save the Children’s involvement in CPFH campaigns is seen through their
spearheading of the “Community Mobilisation for Health” initiative, which
seeks to synergise the lines of communication between community representatives
and public health awareness and accountability. CPFH campaigns are a part of
this public awareness initiative.
“We want to bring public health back into the household… to show there is an
individual responsibility in encouraging an enabling environment that can
bring about behaviour change,” Walto told the attendees.
The conference also featured a short information session with Save the
Children’s Community Mobilisation Manager Raed Abu Hayyaneh on the
family-planning campaign, entitled, “Haytee Alaa.”
The CPFH’s newest campaign, which began on February 1 in co-operation with
the Higher Population Council, targets the younger generation, instilling the
importance of future family planning as an integral part of a healthy
lifestyle.
“We want to encourage people to take care of their health and have regular
checkups with a health professional… you should go to the doctor even if you
are not sick,” said Soliman Farah, the CPFH chief of party.
CPFH began in Jordan in 1996 as a joint project between Save the Children
Jordan and Johns Hopkins University/Bloomberg School of Health, which sponsors
international health awareness programmes worldwide.
USAID and Save the Children are instrumental in providing the financial and
technical assistance needed to successfully launch the public health
campaigns enacted by CPFH in the past decade.