A 5-day Message & Theme Development Workshop was held at BARD, Comilla from January 5-10, 2008. The workshop was organized for the Second Urban Primary Health Care Project II (UPHCP II) to improve the message development skills of the participants, strengthening participant’s skills on pretest techniques and to identify existing health problem in the UPHCP II catchment areas. Thirty senior to midlevel staff of UPHCP II and creature personnel actively participated in the workshop. The workshop participants explored essential elements of developing and testing new messages for family planning and reproductive health, maternal and child health, STI and HIV/AIDS programs for using in mass media, communication support materials as well as in interpersonal communication. The highly participatory approach of the workshop helped improving the messages and materials development skills and pretesting techniques of the participants through hands-on exercises. It is found that participants ’ knowledge in developing messages and materials has significantly increased which was also reflected in the post-test results of the participants.
