Harnessing the potentials of masters/mistresses of ceremony to promote community health and wellbeing amidst COVID-19 and other public health challenges.

Public health risk communication and general health information dissemination efforts require multiple approaches to sustainably engage communities to pursue individual and collective preventive actions. Engaging only highly skilled professionals to deliver public health messages, particularly in low and middle-income countries is expensive. Thus, masters/mistresses of ceremony (MCs) have the potential to contribute to disseminating evidence-based messages to communities on existing, emerging or re-emerging public health issues in developed and developing countries, thereby complementing existing dissemination efforts being made towards malaria, HIV/AIDS and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) prevention and control, among others.

Developing culturally-oriented strategies for communicating women's health issues: a church-based intervention.

Context: In developing countries, messages on maternal health are often developed and conveyed without due regard to the literacy and cultural context of communities. Culturally-acceptable approaches are, however, necessary to increase awareness on womens health issues, especially in cultures where oral tradition is important.

Objective: To describe the processes adopted to engage church-based women support groups to develop innovative culturally-based strategies for communicating womens health matters.