Infographic Social & Behavior Change in Nutrition

Social & Behavior Change in Nutiton:What Works?

Nutrition programs are meaningfl only to the degree that they help people do something diferently. That is where social and behavior change (SBC) methods can help. In our experience, we have seen program planners miss opportunities to achieve much bigger and more lasting impact of their SBC work. The nine tips we ofer here show you what you can do at each stage of a program cycle to avoid missing such great opportunities and to contribute to real, positive changes in people’s lives. Petr Schmied: Social and Behavior Change Consulting, Prague, Czech Republic

Ann Jimerson: Social and Behavior Change Consulting, Washington, DC, USA

Correspondence: Ann Jimerson, 4517 Butterworth Place NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA. Email: annbjimerson@gmail.com

PROJECT DESIGN

Focus on promoting a limited number of the most impactful and feasible practices, ideally at a large scale. This approach will allow your team to gain a deeper understanding of the promoted behaviors, and the target audiences will not feel overwhelmed by being asked to change too many things in their lives. Explore the tips provided in chapter 3.3 of GIZ’s SBC Guide.¹

Go beyond raising awareness. Lack of knowledge is ofen not the key barrier to change – just think of all the things that you know perfectly well that you should be doing, such as exercising or going to a dentist. In your programming, do your best to understand and tackle the real barriers to, and motivators for, change. The useful guidance and tools at www.behaviourchange.net and People in Need’s Behavior Change Toolkit can help you do so.²

Involve the key infuencers who shape mothers’ practices – for example, the fathers, grandmothers or more progressive peers. Without their support, mothers may not have the time, resources, courage or decision-making power to follow the nutrition practices your program promotes. See examples in Alive & Thrive’s ‘Dads can do that!’ innovation brief.³

EVALUATION

Understand why a program (has not) worked, not only whether it met its indicators. Designing your monitoring and evaluation system (including the fnal evaluation) in a way that allows you to understand why the results were (not) achieved is ofen even more valuable than the results themselves. Such insight allows people and organizations to learn and to further improve the impact of their work.

References and notes ¹Schmied P. Social and Behaviour Change Guide. Bonn: GIZ, 2019. Internet: www.snrd-africa.net/wp-content/ uploads/2019/05/2019-05-13_GIZ_SBC-Pratitioners-GUIDE_WEB.pdf (accessed 2 September 2019). ²Schmied P. Behaviour Change Toolkit. Prague: PIN, 2017. Internet: www.behaviourchange.net/docs/pin-2017-behaviour-change-toolkit_mail.pdf (accessed 10 September 2019). ³Alive & Thrive. Dads can do that! Strategies to involve fathers in child feeding. Washington, DC: Alive & Thrive, 2012. Internet: www.aliveandthrive.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Innovation-Brief-Dads.pdf (accessed 2 September 2019). ⁴Alive & Thrive Ethiopia. Choosing the Small Doable Action: Data for High Impact and Feasibility. Alive & Thrive Ethiopia, 2018. Internet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3b7ZK0uF9k&t=0s (accessed 3 September 2019). ⁵Jimerson A. An intriguing message: Where did it come from and why does it work? Alive & Thrive, 2014. Internet: https://lessguess.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/an-intriguing-message-where-did-it-come-from-and-whydoes-it-work/#more-206 (accessed 4 September 2019). ⁶Rare. The Elephant, the Rider and the Path – A Tale of Behavior Change. Rare, 2018. Internet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9KP8uiGZTs (accessed 4 September 2019). ⁷Experience of People in Need (PIN) Cambodia from the EU-funded Community Livestock Market Development (CLIMAD) program. ⁸Alive & Thrive. Understanding factors driving nutrition behavior change: the experience of Alive & Thrive. Washington, DC: Alive & Thrive, 2016.

PROJECT INCEPTION

Use your baseline quantitative data to refne the focus of your activities. The data can help you choose which behaviors to promote (e.g., by knowing how many people practice them now) and the focus of your activities (e.g., by understanding people’s level of knowledge and attitudes towards the promoted behaviors). Take advantage of the guidance available at www.indikit.net.

Break complex behaviors into small doable actions. Let’s take an example. Complementary feeding is complicated: Which foods? How much? How frequently? At what age? Success will be more likely if you select just a couple of specifc actions. Rather than asking mums to “Feed a variety of foods,” suggest a more specifc action such as “Feed your child milk and eggs every day.” The video ‘Choosing the Small Doable Action’ provides great inspiration.⁴

Engage people’s emotions. Decisions about what to do are more ofen based on the emotional self than the rational mind. In Peru, when nurses added the message “Teach your child to eat with love, patience and good humor,” the mothers smiled, likely making them more open to the ‘instructional’ messages.⁵ To learn more, enjoy this video, ‘The Elephant, the Rider and the Path – A Tale of Behavior Change.’⁶

IMPLEMENTATION AND MONITORING

Use real-time data to monitor the quality and progress of implemented activities. For example, People in Need’s frontline staf used smartphone-based checklists to monitor the quality of SBC activities and the key gaps in the adoption of promoted practices. The data was automatically analyzed and used to adjust the project strategy.⁷

Employ multiple contact points, such as face-to-face interactions, community discussions, radio shows and cooking demonstrations. Alive & Thrive’s research showed that the number of communication channels matter: in Ethiopia, only 16% of women who were exposed to one type of communication activity fed a child an egg, as opposed to 50% of women who were exposed to fve or more activities.⁸

A new movement for building informed and engaged societes The Global Alliance for Social and Behaviour Change

Debora B Freitas Lopez CORE Group, University Research Co., LLC, Washington, DC, USA

Key messages

> There is a need to: demonstrate the impact of social and behavior change (SBC), showcase best practices, encourage adaptation based on lessons learned, and support advocacy for policy change and funding in a consistent way to drive the use of evidence-based approaches and improve the wellbeing of many.

> The Global Alliance for Social and Behaviour Change (the Global Alliance) has a unifed commitment to and for people-centered development through the use of evidence-based SBC approaches to improve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) outcomes related to gender, health, environment and education, among others.

> Although still nascent, the Global Alliance has begun to gather compelling research fndings highlighting the impact of people-centered strategies on the SDGs throughout the world.

> The Global Alliance’s structure includes three clusters that drive the entity’s work: Evidence for Impact, Coordination–Infrastructure and Policy Engagement.

> Strategies endorsed by the Global Alliance are important and necessary to inform people-centered development initiatives that are driven by social change and behavior change.

The need to shif norms and change behaviors Development challenges demand solutions that shif norms, change behaviors and amplif the voices of those who have the most at stake. Evidence-based SBC approaches ofer solutions to these challenges. Yet, many who work in development have limited or no access to, or understanding of, the existing body of evidence in SBC, especially in sectors other than health. Furthermore, we ofen do not use the same terminology to communicate these evidence-based approaches, our program design and implementation, and later our fndings. We also do not always share or publish our work in a way that could drive learning and knowledge at local, national and international levels. In recent years, it has become clear that we need an entity that can help to demonstrate the impact of SBC, showcase best practices, encourage adaptation based on lessons learned, and support advocacy for policy change and fnding to drive the use of evidence-based approaches to SBC that can improve the wellbeing of many. This entity – the Global Alliance for Social and Behaviour Change: Building Informed and Engaged Societies (the Global Alliance) 1 – was founded in 2018. It is a coalition of organizations 2 representing a range of felds and technical areas that support the SDGs. Its core work is based on the people side of development, including empowerment, inclusiveness and equality. It refects a unifed commitment to and for people-centered development through the use of evidence-based SBC approaches to improve SDG outcomes in relation to gender, health, environment and education, among others.