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Mr. Caro, Jim to colleagues and friends, finished his BS degree and took some postgraduate courses in development communication from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He received his Master of Social Change and Development from the University of Newcastle in Australia as one of the few Australian Development Scholarship recipients from the Philippines.
He has gained work experience from various academic, national and international organizations in the Philippines and Thailand. He also went on technical missions to several Southeast Asian countries, which included Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar and Viet Nam. Mr. Caro has worked as a university researcher, freelance journalist, communications consultant and communications officer/specialist.
Jim is taking advanced post-graduate training on veterinary studies with strong focus on animal health communication (AHC) at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. His research goal is to establish a model of animal health communication and understand the social and cultural factors contributing to AHC.
His areas of expertise are on information materials development and evaluation; communication needs assessment; communication program evaluation; and, social change and development.
One might wonder what a communications specialist has to do with veterinary studies. Jim had been working on animal disease control programs for the past eight years. He made several major accomplishments as project staff for an Australian-funded and FAO-administered Foot and Mouth Disease project in the Philippines. He edited, designed and managed the production of the Philippines’ first special research journal on Foot and Mouth Disease, a collection of all FMD-studies commissioned by the Bureau of Animal Industry. He also conceptualized, pre-tested and evaluated various information materials for the FMD Campaign in the Philippines. It was during this stint that he became one of the proponents of animal health communication in Southeast Asia, which the Philippine FMD Task Force led to endorse to members of the Southeast Asia Foot and Mouth Disease (SEAFMD) Campaign. He also served as national communications consultant for FAO Philippines designing and managing communication survey researches. Results from these surveys have been instrumental in the HPAI Communication in the Philippines. As communications officer for various developmental projects, he helped reshape how these projects are carried out by giving importance to communicating to stakeholders of the project through participatory approach.
As a development communicator, he adheres to the participatory approach of communication planning and information materials development. This had been a focus of a journal article, Communication Management in the Control of Foot and Mouth Disease, he co-authored.
His interest in making animal health programs work for both veterinarians and grassroots stakeholders increased his interest in developing the concept of animal health communication. He aims to enable Southeast Asian countries to better understand the role of animal health communication in animal health programs and find ways to integrate easily animal health communication components into animal health programs with his current research.
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