Behaviour Change Communication

Communication for Development (C4D) promising practices are dialogue-driven interventions that lead to the sustainable improvement of living conditions for children and their families, particularly the most vulnerable. This booklet brings together four outstanding examples from Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Viet Nam, where UNICEF-supported interventions by governments and civil society organizations are bringing about positive change. Click here for full booklet ...
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In April 2018, almost 1,200 people gathered in Indonesia for the Summit on Behaviour and Social Change Communication. Practitioners, researchers, donors, and leaders from more than 400 organisations travelled to Nusa Dua from the Asia Pacific region, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. This issue features ten papers prepared by Summit participants based on their presentations. They cover a range of challenges from using story-telling to help fishermen in Belize deal with threats to their occupations, and influencing adolescent girls and boys in India to address gender discrimination and stereotyping – to the use of social media to change norms regarding babies’ health in Malawi. Click here for full journal ...
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This issue of Frontiers of CLTS shares and builds on the learning from a desk study that explores examples of men’s and boys’ behaviours and gender roles in sanitation and hygiene (S&H). Of particular interest is the extent to which the engagement of men and boys in S&H processes is leading to sustainable and transformative change in households and communities and reducing gendered inequality. The review focuses on men and boys: how to engage them (or not), how to mobilise them as allies in the transformation of S&H outcomes and the problems they contribute to and experience. Click here for full publication ...
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The 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018 http://www.aids2018.org/) took place in July 2018 in Amsterdam. The theme of AIDS 2018 was “Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges”, drawing attention to the need of rights-based approaches to more effectively reach key populations, including in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and the North-African/Middle Eastern regions where epidemics are growing. Some of the C4D related conference sessions and abstracts submitted are listed below. Our actions count: Community mobilization model for social change and transforming ‘inaction in response to Stigma and Discrimination' into ‘action' HIV and TB-related stigma and discrimination are important impediments to controlling the dual HIV and TB epidemics. A South African Stigma Index Survey was completed in 18 districts in South Africa. This study included over 10 700 participants who are HIV positive and who are older than 15 years, the largest of its kind in the world. Measuring stigma associated with TB was included in this type of survey for the first time. The purpose of the Stigma Index was to measure stigma and discrimination experienced by PLHIV and TB and to inform the development and implementation of national policies and programmes to protect the rights of PLHIV and TB. From online ...
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Abstract: Structural HIV prevention interventions have gained prominence as ways to address underlying social and cultural factors that fuel the HIV epidemic. Identifying theories that explain how structural interventions are expected to change such factors can substantially increase their success. The Tchova Tchova community dialogue program, a theory-based intervention implemented in 2009–2010 in the provinces of Zambezia and Sofala, Mozambique, aimed to change gender and sexual norms for HIV prevention. Through facilitated sessions, the program sparked critical thinking and open dialogue among participants. This article measures the program’s effectiveness based on a sample of 462 participants and 453 nonparticipants. The results show that the program was successful in producing changes in three of the underlying structural factors of HIV: gender attitudes, gender roles, and HIV stigma. The program was also successful in changing other factors associated with HIV infection, including HIV prevention knowledge, discussion of HIV between sex partners, and having multiple sex partners. Click here for full paper ...
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Abstract: From the bustling cities of Zambia to the most rural parts of Lesotho, HIV/AIDS is a raging epidemic that affects over 15% of the adult population in many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. Public health interventions often take the form of media campaigns, which utilize television, radio, and print advertisements to spread awareness and inform the population of risk factors, prevention methods, and treatment options. This paper will focus on HIV/AIDS radio programs in Malawi, Zambia, and other countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It will analyze these programs’ air times, audience, presentation style, and content, and identify how these factors influenced behavioral changes in the audiences. Additionally, this paper proposes promising techniques to ensure the success of future campaigns based on previous findings. Given these reviews of broadcasts of the past and their strengths and weaknesses, radio stations can better understand the reasons behind the programs’ respective impacts on the target populations. Further, this methodology can be applied when considering new radio programs for health education for HIV/AIDS and beyond. Click here for full paper ...
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A cluster randomised trial (CRT) in Burkina Faso was the first to demonstrate that a radio campaign increased health-seeking behaviours, specifically antenatal care attendance, health facility deliveries and primary care consultations for children under 5 years. Methods: Under-five consultation data by diagnosis was obtained from primary health facilities in trial clusters, from January 2011 to December 2014. Interrupted time-series analyses were conducted to assess the intervention effect by time period on under-five consultations for separate diagnosis categories that were targeted by the media campaign. The Lives Saved Tool was used to estimate the number of under-five lives saved and the per cent reduction in child mortality that might have resulted from increased health service utilisation. Scenarios were generated to estimate the effect of the intervention in the CRT study areas, as well as a national scale-up in Burkina Faso and future scale-up scenarios for national media campaigns in five African countries from 2018 to 2020. Evidence from a CRT shows that a child health radio campaign increased under-five consultations at primary health centres for malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea (the leading causes of post neonatal child mortality in Burkina Faso) and resulted in an estimated 7.1% average reduction in under-five mortality ...
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According to the World Bank’s 2015 Development Report, edutainment has the potential to achieve large-scale behaviour change, and many other studies have noted similarly positive results. However, rigorously-gathered evidence of edutainment’s impact on behaviour change is still lacking. Oxfam has implemented edutainment programmes in 14 countries and is constantly seeking to better understand its impact. In 2015, Oxfam Novib’s impact measurement unit conducted a rigorous (randomised) evaluation of an edutainment pilot project in Tunisia. Click here for full case study ...
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In the last few years, scholars and practitioners working in low- and mid-income countries (LMIC) have increasingly been trying to harness the influence of social norms to improve people’s health globally. However, the literature informing social norm interventions in LMIC lacks a framework to understand how norms interact with other factors that sustain harmful practices and behaviours. This gap has led to short-sighted interventions that target social norms exclusively without a wider awareness of how other institutional, material, individual and social factors affect the harmful practice. Emphasizing norms to the exclusion of other factors might ultimately discredit norms-based strategies, not because they are flawed but because they alone are not sufficient to shift behaviour. In this paper, the authors share a framework (already adopted by some practitioners) that locates norm-based strategies within the wider array of factors that must be considered when designing prevention programmes in LMIC. Click here for full paper ...
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"Enough" - a worldwide Oxfam campaign -aims to replace harmful social norms with positive ones that promote gender equality and non-violence. To better understand which social norms perpetuate traditional practices in Nigeria and how they influence behaviour, Oxfam in Nigeria conducted formative research by interviewing 20 men and 20 women and analysing the results in a campaign design workshop with partner organizations and experts working on violence against women and girls. The findings will inform the development of the Enough campaign in Nigeria. From the research and subsequent analysis in the workshop, four social norms were identified as drivers of the harmful traditional practices FGM/C and early marriage: A respectable woman marries early; A respectable woman is submissive to male authority; A suitable woman is not promiscuous; A woman is worth more as a wife than as a daughter. Women and girls who transgress these norms face four main kinds of sanction: peer pressure, condemnation, exclusion and force. Encouragingly, although the research found that respondents believe others still think it is appropriate to follow traditional practices, many of the respondents’ own individual attitudes have already shifted – a first signifier of social norms change. Click here for full report ...
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This report draws on 44 real-life examples and 168 research papers from 10 fields to develop 7 general principles that seem to underlie information initiatives that successfully empower people. Principles 1, 2, and 3 speak to how information empowers through reinterpretation, and Principles 4 to 7 speak to how we can support that reinterpretation—and get people to act. The goal of this report is to illustrate that information does not empower on its own. Rather, the act of reinterpreting information is empowering, and that act is driven by social and emotional factors. From the literature summarized in this report, we extrapolate principles by which the reinterpretation of information leads to empowerment. Click here for full report ...
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Following decades of civil war, South Sudan still lacks a functioning healthcare system and has some of the worst maternal and child health indicators in the world. To help address this, between 2012 and 2017 BBC Media Action produced and broadcast a range of national radio programmes seeking to influence knowledge, attitudes, discussion and the social norms most likely to drive improvements in the RMNCH-related behaviours of women and their families. It also worked to strengthen the capacity of local radio stations to produce similar high-quality, audience-driven health programming. This report presents a synthesis of all research and analysis completed under this project. In brief, it finds that the challenging country context (e.g. the limited availability of quality healthcare nationally and the ongoing humanitarian crisis) limited the extent to which the project was able to contribute to improved health outcomes. Despite this, audiences were generally optimistic about the shows’ influence and value, and reported gaining knowledge and making some behavioural changes as a result of tuning in. Click here for full evaluation ...
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