In This Issue:

1. Letter from Arlette Campbell White

2. Introducing the World Bank Institute’s "Adapting to Change" Team Members

3. Program Activities
   1. Core Course
   2. Regional Training:
      1. Middle East and Northern Africa
      2. Francophone Africa
      3. Anglophone Africa: "People-Centered Policies: Gender, Health and Poverty"
   3. Regionalization of the Learning Program
   4. Distance Learning:
      1. Post-Core Course Professional Development
      2. Adapting to Change CD ROM
      3. Web site

4. New readings

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to have the opportunity to communicate with you via the first newsletter of the Adapting to Change Learning Program. First of all, please accept, on behalf of WBI’s Health and Population Team, my warmest greetings for a healthy and happy New Year! Much time has passed since the Core Course took place last September, the Adapting to Change program has been expanding and we have lots of news to share with you.

As those of you who participated know, the first global Core Course on Population, Reproductive Health, and Health Sector Reform was held in Washington, DC, from 20 September to 8 October, 1999. Sixty-nine people from 21 countries and nine organizations (NGOs, bilateral donors, international agencies, and academic institutions) participated in the course.

In December 1999, we had a technical review of the course to help us evaluate and learn from our experiences. Using the participant evaluations, feedback from a mid-point focus group, and submissions to the suggestion box, as well as feedback from the daily meetings of resource persons, we reviewed the entire course from two perspectives: thematic content and delivery methods. Examples of what we learned from the review can be found below.

One of the Program’s objectives is the regionalization of the Core Course through enhancing institutional capacity at national and regional level. Based on contacts established during the past 18 months, several new activities have been planned for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and for Francophone West Africa. More information is provided below.

We hope you will use our web site and this newsletter to keep in touch with us and with your fellow participants from the course. Please let us know what you think of this newsletter, the CD Rom, the web site and the course itself. Your feedback is welcome and encouraged.

Warm regards,

Arlette Campbell White

Program Director

II.  INTRODUCING THE WORLD BANK INSTITUTE'S "ADAPATING TO CHANGE" TEAM MEMBERS

To let you know who is working behind the scenes to bring this program to you, we would like to introduce ourselves.

Debra Beattie, Instructional Designer

Debra is an instructional designer with more than ten years experience designing and delivering distance learning courses and programs using a wide range of educational technologies in Canada, the United Kingdom, Mauritius, and North Africa. She is the Program’s advisor on all distance learning matters.
Email: dbeattie@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 8243

Eugene Boostrom, Senior Public Health Specialist

Eugene is a public health physician with a doctorate in Health Services Administration (including studies in Demography) and 30 years' experience in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia. He contributes to curriculum design, evaluation, and training methods, with an emphasis on distance learning and the design of the web site and CD ROMs.
Email: eboostrom@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 4084

Arlette Campbell White, Population and Reproductive Health Specialist

Arlette manages the Program and, although a demographer by training, has spent most of her life working on women’s health issues through previous employment with the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Population Fund. She has lived and worked in East Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. Her particular interests are adolescent health, and HIV/AIDS. She manages the overall coordination of the Program activities, including liaison with technical and donor partners. Her second job is raising Amanda (aged 3) and Sophie (aged 2) to follow in her footsteps and work on reproductive health concerns!
Email: awhite1@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 3301

Nicole Fults, Program Assistant

Nicole helps the team with all of the Program’s administrative needs. Together with Jo, Nicole helps administer the Program’s budget. She also helps the course participants with everything from logistics to advice on the best shops! It is Nicole’s cheerful voice with its French accent that you will hear if you ring the Program with an enquiry.
Email: nfults@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473-6275

Jo Hindriks, Research Analyst

Jo is a training specialist and economist with a specialization on countries in transition. Her primary experience is in countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Since joining the Program she has been active in the Program’s expansion in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region. She also works with Eugene and Carrie on distance learning initiatives including, but not limited to, the web site. She is responsible for monitoring the budget and other administrative matters.
Email: chindriksstolker@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 6425

Marilyn Lauglo, Consultant (Reproductive Health and Health Systems Analyst)

Marilyn is a social scientist and is our resident gender specialist, concerned with equity aspects of health systems. She has work experience in southern and east Africa in the field of health sector reforms. She has contributed to the Program by drafting the technical review background paper which formed part of the evaluation of the 1999 Core Course. Together with Arlette, Tom and Abdo she is working on the curriculum for the three-week course planned for October 2000. She also works on developing activities with partner institutions in Asia and East Africa.
Email: Mlauglo@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 8926

Laurence Sage and Marie-Lily Delion, Participant Admissions

Laurence and Marie-Lily are the team behind the scenes who are responsible for participant admissions and most of the logistics administration and smooth running of the training events. You won’t often see them, but it would certainly be noticed if they weren’t there.
Email: Lsage@worldbank.org and mdelion@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 4736466 (Laurence) and 1/202 4730183 (Marie-Lily)

Tom Merrick, Senior Population Advisor

Tom is the World Bank’s lead advisor on population and reproductive health issues. He is a demographer and an economist with a long and distinguished career in the field. Prior to joining the Bank he was director of the Population Reference Bureau. He has been working with Bank staff and our partners in client countries to implement the Programme of Action agreed at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Because of the challenges raised by having to do this in settings where health reforms are being carried out, he has been working closely with the WBI team on the design and delivery of this learning program.
Email: tmerrick@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 6762

Paul Shaw, Lead Economist

Paul Shaw is a lead economist in WBI and leader of its health and population team, under the aegis of which the P/RH Program and its sister program, the Flagship Program in Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing, are situated. Before joining WBI, Paul worked in 'operations' in the Bank's Africa region and was the lead author of a major Bank study and program of action called Better Health in Africa. Prior to joining the Bank, Paul served as a senior economist in several international agencies including the ILO, FAO, and UNFPA, as a policy advisor for his government in Canada, and as a faculty member in universities. He is the author of eight books and more than 50 articles in professional journals on issues of human development.
Email: rshaw@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 3441

Abdo Yazbeck, Senior Economist

Abdo is a senior economist in the South Asia Region. He has worked in Africa, South Asia, MENA and Eastern and Central Europe. He specializes in health care finance, health and equity, and private sector development. On the Adapting to Change team, he is responsible for developing course curricula and for participating as a trainer and key resource person for the course. As a side job, he models ties for the tie contest, even though the overwhelming response so far is that he should not give up his day job.
Email: ayazbeck@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 0847

Caroline (Carrie) Zwicker, Consultant (Training Specialist)

Carrie is a training and adult learning specialist with experience in reproductive health in Africa and the US. She develops training activities with the Program’s partners in Francophone West Africa. She also works with Jo and Eugene on the design and maintenance of the web site (including this newsletter and the CD ROMs), and works on training methods, curriculum design and evaluation.
Email: czwicker@worldbank.org
Telephone: 1/202 473 9512

Most of us are part of the WBI Human Development Group’s Health and Population Team which is also responsible for the Flagship Program on Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing. We have many partners, without whom our work could not be accomplished, outside of the Bank. You can read about our other partners on our web site.

Feel free to contact any of us if you have any questions or would like to give us feedback.

Core Course Technical Review

Eighteen resource people participated in the Technical Review of the Core Course, which was held in Washington, D.C. in December, 1999. Development of the second Core Course is guided by the discussions arising from the Technical Review and evaluations of the first Core Course. Many decisions were reached concerning the next course, including: there should be a better integration of the themes covered by the three weeks; links between RH and health sector reforms should be strengthened; reproductive rights should be introduced early in the course; human resource issues should be addressed in the second week; and that further attention should be given to course evaluation.

We are delighted to announce that the Second Adapting to Change Global Core Course will be held in Washington D.C., 2 to 20 October 2000. Once again we are honored that Fred Sai has agreed to chair the course. Other highlights include: an all-star cast, including presentations by John Bongaarts, Margaret Catley-Carlson, David Bloom, Allan Hill and others; the Second Annual Design-A-Reproductive Health-Tie Competition, with international models chosen from among our participants; wonderful networking opportunities; and, of course, a chance to learn more about new findings and best practice in population, reproductive health and health sector reform. Please spread the word and mention the course to any of your colleagues who might be interested. For more information contact Laurence Sage.

MENA Region

The first module of the "Adapting to Change" Core Course will be delivered in close cooperation with the Social Research Center (SRC) of the American University of Cairo (AUC) from 15 to 24 May 2000 in Cairo, Egypt. The module, adapted from a five-day face-to-face training, will be delivered as an eight-day distance learning event integrated into the SRC three-month training program on Research Methods for Policy Formulation and Evaluation. The SRC program has a special focus on population and reproductive health concerns in the Arab countries and is offered for the first time in April-June 2000. Teaching faculty will include staff from the World Bank, experts from the region, and other international experts. The "Adapting to Change" module will use a variety of distance education methods, particularly video conferencing.

The objective of this module is to assist population/reproductive health (P/RH) practitioners, as well as researchers and trainers, to adapt RH programs and services to the changing conditions and requirements of health systems which are undergoing reform. It will equip participants to better understand the new environment for delivering RH services, both globally and in the context of the MENA region.

The training will feature the dissemination and discussion of the first part of the WBI Adapting to Change: Population, Reproductive Health and Health Sector Reform Core Course. This week encompasses the broader setting of P/RH issues in the context of development and health sector reform. It will cover the following topics:

• the new vision of population
• poverty reduction and human development
• changing demographic and epidemiological conditions
• links between changing demographics and macro-economic changes
• linkages between RH, welfare and poverty reduction at both individual and societal levels
• multi-sectoral dimensions of RH
• gender, demographic RH outcomes, and poverty reduction
• the political economy of P/RH

The audience will include practitioners from government and NGOs, researchers and trainers from sectors such as health, education, women’s affairs, finance and planning. Participants have been invited from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.

If you would like more information regarding this course please contact Jo at chindrikstolker@worldbank.org or Hoda Rashad at hrashad@aucegypt.edu .

Francophone West Africa

The Learning Program is moving forward to launch the Adapting to Change Francophone Program. From 8-11 February, a curriculum development workshop was held in Cotonou, Benin. Members of the team met with trainers from a number of institutions, including: Centre Africain d’Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG), Sénégal; Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Sénégal; Centre d’Etudes de la Famille Africaine (CEFA), Togo; University of Geneva, Switzerland; Harvard School of Public Health, USA; Centre de Formation et de Recherche en Matière de Population (CEFORP), Bénin; Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED), France; United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Cameroon Regional Office; International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); World Health Organization (WHO); Swiss Tropical Institute; and Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur la Population pour le Développement (CERPOD), Mali. This group formed a Steering Committee to manage the work of a Francophone Network of Partner Institutions with the aim of building regional and institutional capacity in the areas of population, reproductive health and health sector reform.

From 19 to 23 June 2000 in Dakar, Senegal, a Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop will be held in preparation for the Francophone Core Course which will also be held in Dakar from 22 January- 2 February 2001. The purpose of the ToT is to finalize the Core Course agenda, identify appropriate training methods for the topics covered, work on the case study method of training and the cases that have been developed, and to explore possibilities for incorporating distance learning into the program as a whole.

The Francophone Core Course is designed for a diverse audience. We welcome professionals from the public and private sector who are involved in the financing, planning, implementation and evaluation of reproductive health services in Bank client countries; staff members from Bank resident missions and other donor agencies who are working with countries to implement the reproductive health approach called for in the ICPD Program of Action; and trainers from regionally-based population and reproductive health training and research institutions.

If you would like more information on the Francophone Program in general, please contact Carrie at czwicker@worldbank.org . If you would like information about the Francophone Network, please contact Mamadou Dicko at mdicko@cefa.café.tg .

Anglophone Africa: Distance Learning Training Program "People-Centered Policies: Gender, Health and Poverty"

The Population Program is collaborating with WBI’s gender training program and the gender team of the Africa region’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) unit to deliver an eight-week course by distance learning. The course is aimed at sensitizing high level policy makers to the importance of making development plans gender-sensitive, by showing the crucial role played by women in the economy and how this role, central to poverty reduction, is affected by health and other issues. The training will be delivered from mid-September to mid-November 2000, in Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda.

The eight three-hour sessions encompass an introduction to gender issues, and the structural role of women and men in the economy/household-care economy (including time allocation data, persistence of gender-based disparities in access to and control of assets, human capability, land, finance and labor, and social capital). These sessions form the building blocks for moving to the policy, program, and project implications of these subjects. The training then goes on to show links with health (maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence), education, water, and the informal sector.

In preparation for the training, a ToT will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 21 to 28 August 2000. This will familiarize trainers with the material, as well as introduce them to distance learning methodologies and participatory training techniques. It is anticipated that a Francophone version of the training will be delivered in 2001. For more information, please contact Carrie at czwicker@worldbank.org or Marilyn at mlauglo@worldbank.org.

Contacts are being established with institutions in Anglophone Africa and Asia which have indicated an interest in partnering with WBI to provide regionally adapted activities under the "Adapting to Change" learning program. More on this in later issues of the Newsletter!

As you can see, the Program is developing many activities via distance learning in an effort to expand the Program’s coverage and reach more people who would otherwise be unable to attend the various training events.

In addition to the above-mentioned training, the following initiatives are being undertaken:

We have designed this innovative activity to follow up on the Core Course participants six months after the delivery of the first Course. Two three-hour distance learning sessions will be held with selected countries, at which we will discuss how participants are using the training in their everyday work, and what new initiatives, if any, have arisen as a result of their participation in the Course.

For more information contact Eugene at eboostrom@worldbank.org or Debra at dbeattie@worldbank.org .

CD Roms of our complete Web site are now available! They contain all of the information on the live version of the Seb site including the reference library documents. All participants of the Core Course 1999 will receive the new updated version of the CD Rom distributed at the course. If you did not attend the Course and would like to receive a copy, please contact czwicker@worldbank.org .

In the last few months we have been busy updating the web site to include most of the documents used in the core course. All materials, with the exception a few documents for which we were unable to obtain copyright permission, are now available in "pdf" format. These can be read online or printed with the "Adobe Acrobat Reader", which can be downloaded at no charge from the web at the Adobe web site:www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

We are working to create an index of all reference library documents on the web site, which will be accessible via email. Soon, you will have the ability to request all documents via an email "mailback" system even without Web access. We will provide full details and instructions on how to use this service when the work is completed.

During the spring and summer, a database of population and reproductive health training resources will be compiled and posted on the web site. It will contain a listing of P/RH/HSR courses offered by other institutions, universities and non-governmental organizations worldwide. We are trying to make this as inclusive as we can and any information about training courses on population, and reproductive health, health sector reform topics would be appreciated. We will also keep updating our links page with links to other relevant web pages. Please send suggestions to Jo at chindriksstolker@worldbank.org or Carrie at czwicker@worldbank.org .

If you attended the core course in September you will remember that Lori Heise, from the Center for Health and Gender Equity, made an informative and dynamic presentation on gender-based violence and reproductive health. You can now access the paper on which that presentation was based.

To see the full text of this report go to the Johns Hopkins Web site.

We have also made this document available to you using our mailback service. If you would like to receive the 1.1 mg document via email, follow these easy directions:

Send an email to: reprodocs@forumone.com, with only the URL (without <> brackets): <http://orion.forumone.com/reprohealth/files.fcgi/566_violence.pdf> in the body of the email.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for your interest in the Adapting to Change program. We welcome your comments and suggestions to czwicker@worldbank.org. Please circulate this message to other interested people and encourage them to register for their own copy on the Web at www.worldbank.org/wbi/reprohealth/ or by sending email to repro@forumone.com.
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