User:Jemiba

Jeffrey Milton Bates (born 9 May 1965) is an international development expert with a focus on public health, social policy and community engagement strategies for child survival, emergency response and disease control. He currently works with UNFPA on communications for sexual and reproductive health and humanitarian response. Bates is credited with introducing analysis of epidemiological and social data to identify high risk groups in the polio eradication effort, and had lead the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in developing strategies to engage high risk populations. Until 2016, he was working with UNICEF in Iraq as Chief of Communications.

Background

Bates was born in [|Fremont, Ohio], U.S. in 1965. He graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio in 1988, and joined the United States Peace Corps as a Math Teacher Training in [|Nepal]. After completing his stint in the Peace Corps, again attended Ohio University where he earned two Masters of Arts degrees (international affairs and interpersonal communication) and also studied epidemiology in the Ohio University Tropical Disease Institute where he focused on [|medical entomology]. Bates is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Washington.

Development Career

He returned to Nepal in 1995 and began his career in international development working with Johns Hopkins University, John Snow International and later, in 2006, joining UNICEF Nepal. In UNICEF, Bates led the efforts to establish an interactive radio programme for early childhood development, and eventually worked in child protection establishing non-formal education programmes for working and street children. He returned to academia in 1999 to pursue his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Bates joined the World Health Organization in their Regional Office for South East Asia, based in [|New Delhi] India in 2002 as a technical officer to support communication policies for polio eradication. During his time with WHO, he developed and operationalized what has become known as the Underserved Strategy to reach out to and empower disenfranchised, mostly Islamic groups, in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The strategy has been credited with closing the immunity gap in underserved populations by creating partnerships with trusted institutions and local leaders who became the face and voice of the eradication initiative, and instilled trust in communities wary of central and state government initiatives.

UNICEF

In 2004 Bates joined UNICEF Pakistan where he developed and led a dedicated team of UNICEF and WHO staff that supported the Pakistan Ministry of Health to provide innovative support to polio and routine immunization efforts. He developed the first theory based research agenda for polio eradication, defining communication and social variables which were used to guide communication and community outreach strategies and monitor community sentiment. In 2006 he joined UNICEF NY where he developed global policy and operational guidelines for polio eradication.

Using these standards, Bates supported restructuring of the UNICEF communication programmes in Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, Nigeria and Somalia, and continued to work with the India and Pakistan efforts and UNICEF regional offices. Bates has several publications in the field of communication and polio eradication. He is currently based out of New York with UNFPA, where he holds a position in the Media and Communications Branch.

Bates is an avid paraglider, motorcyclist and bow hunter, and has two daughters (Ember and Lena) and a son (Maycen) and lives in Westchester County, New York.