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- UNICEF launched ‘Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS)’ course for health journalists in collaboration with Oxford University, Thomas Reuters and IIMC.
- CAS is a free online course launched by UNICEF as a part of ‘Every Child, Alive’ campaign.
As a part of World Immunization Week that is being observed from April 24 to April 30, UNICEF has launched an online ‘Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS)’ course for health journalists in collaboration with Oxford University, IIMC (Indian Institute of Mass Communication) and Thomas Reuters. CAS is a free online course launched by UNICEF as a part of ‘Every Child, Alive’ campaign.
The course is exclusively available for entry and mid-level health reporters . The online course in CAS enhances the capacities of media representatives to produce general factual reports.
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In January 2018, IIMC integrated the CAS course as a module within all the eight streams of communication that it presently teaches. Director General of IIMC, Mr. KG Suresh revealed that the CAS course provides a specialised set of competencies and skills to the journalism students . The course also encourages the students to research and analyse health-related information for relevance and credibility thereby improving the accuracy in reporting.
Director of Journalism and Media Programmes at Thomas Reuters Foundation , Mr. Nicolas Ballet explained that through the CAS course, Thomas Reuters will be training Indian journalists to apply the foundation’s principles of impartiality and accuracy to their reporting on immunization and mother and child health. The foundation is hoping to inspire a new generation of journalists to give higher importance to topics at the heart of economic and social development, he highlighted.
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UNICEF Representative, Dr. Yasmin Ali Haque pointed that media is one of the key partners for the organisation. The CAS course will be a unique opportunity for health journalists across the country. The course will help health journalists to add a critical value of evidence in the process of reporting. It is the responsibility of the health journalists to disseminate credible messages on the value of vaccines and the way immunization saves the lives of girls and boys, he explained.
