A partner in the Population Council–led Consortium, RK Swamy BBDO, conducted a qualitative study of advertising agencies to document their experiences with regard to planning and implementing behavior change communication (BCC) campaigns on social and health issues for rural populations; explore media planners' perspectives regarding the challenges faced in implementing these campaigns and possible strategies to make them more effective; and understand the role of the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, the nodal multi-media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India in reaching rural populations with information on government policies and programs. The findings outlined in this policy brief will help in planning appropriate BCC strategies and identifying potential partnerships with leading agencies to implement these strategies in the most effective manner.
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is already affecting human and animal health sectors negatively. The UN General Assembly has listed AMR among issues that need urgent address; subsequently FAO/OIE/WHO tripartite took lead and jointly developed Global Action Plan (GAP) to tackle the problem. States and Governments have developed AMR National Action Plans (NAP), Policies and Communication Strategies. In health communication realms AMR is a distinctive and novel phenomenon. Consequently, communication theories and principles on this issue have not been tested adequately; even as literature around AMR is growing. While there are lessons that can be learned from previous and ongoing health communication campaigns targeting various audiences and coined around behavior change strategies; AMR is certainly a unique and maiden case. Kenya developed and is implementing its AMR - NAP. Kenya is among few countries that have developed and implemented an AMR Communication Strategy with the goal to create awareness and subsequently change audience behavior. This paper presents a review of available literature, reports, Kenya experiences and theories that can be applied to AMR communications. It illustrates the gaps, opportunities and challenges and proposes strategies that can be applied at the moment as more literature on AMR communication is collected through research and documentation of country experiences.
To strengthen social and behavior change communication (SBCC) capacity of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) of the Government of Bangladesh, BCCP/BKMI developed two eLearning courses providing opportunities for professional development of SBCC Program Managers who have no access to training or refreshers training. The two eLearning courses – Message and Material Development (MMD) and Monitoring and Evaluation (MandE) of SBCC programs – went online in September 2015, where all users could register their participation so results could be monitored. Methodology: To assess the uses of these courses a randomly selected sample was collected to run a pre and post-test analyses and a phone survey were conducted. Systematic random sampling was used to select a sample of 75 MandE and 25 MMD course participants from a sampling frame of 179 and 51 respectively. Results: As of September 2016, more than 179 learners have completed the MandE course, and 49 learners have completed the MMD course. The users of these courses are program managers, university faculty members, and students. Encouraging results were revealed from the analysis of pre and post-test scores and a phone survey three months after course completion. Test scores suggested a substantial increase in knowledge. The pre-test scores findings suggested that about 19% learners scored high on the MandE. The post-test scores finding indicated a high score (92%) of the sample across 4 modules of MandE. For MMD course in pre-test scoring, 30% of the learners scored high, and 100% scored high at the post-test. It was found that all the learners in the phone survey have discussed the courses. Most of the sharing occurred with colleagues and friends, usually through face to face (70%) interaction. The learners reported that they did recommend the two courses to concerned people. About 67% MandE and 76% MMD learners stated that the concepts that they had to learn during the course were put into practice in their work settings. The respondents for both MandE and ...
The importance of children's nutritional status for subsequent human capital formation, the limited evidence of the effectiveness of social protection interventions on child nutrition, and the absence of knowledge on the intra-household impacts of cash and food transfers or how they are shaped by complementary programming motivate this paper. We implemented two, linked randomized control trials in rural Bangladesh, with treatment arms including cash transfers, a food ration, or a mixed food and cash transfer, as well as treatments where cash and nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) or where food and nutrition BCC were provided. Only cash plus nutrition BCC had a significant impact on nutritional status, but its effect on height-for-age z scores (HAZ) was large, 0.25SD. We explore the mechanisms underlying this impact. Improved diets – including increased intake of animal source foods – along with reductions in illness in the cash plus BCC treatment arm are consistent with the improvement we observe in children's HAZ. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) ; PHND; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
Context: The Indian family planning program, though successful in increasing contraceptive use among couples who have achieved their desired family size, has not been equally successful in educating couples about the use of contraceptive methods for birth spacing. Methods: An evaluation was conducted of a behavior change communication intervention integrated into the existing government program to increase knowledge and use of the lactational amenorrhea method and postpartum contraception through counseling by community workers. The intervention, which ran between September 2006 and January 2007, was conducted among 959 pregnant women aged 15–24 who lived in Uttar Pradesh, India. The evaluation used logistic regression analyses to measure differences in knowledge and contraceptive use between baseline and the four- and nine-month postpartum follow-up surveys within and between the intervention and comparison groups. Results: The follow-up data show increases in knowledge of the lactational amenorrhea method and spacing methods and in use of spacing methods. At four months postpartum, women in the intervention group were more likely to know the healthy spacing messages than those in the comparison group (odds ratio, 2.1). At nine months postpartum, women in the intervention group, those with higher knowledge of healthy spacing practices and those with correct knowledge of two or more spacing methods were more likely than others to be using a contraceptive method (1.5–3.5). Use of modern contraceptives for spacing at nine months postpartum was 57% in the intervention group versus 30% in the comparison group. Conclusions: Targeted behavior change communication using community workers is an effective and feasible strategy for promoting postpartum contraception.
PR ; IFPRI3; ISI; CRP2; E Building Resilience; G Cross-cutting gender theme; IFPRIOA; Cash Transfer and Intimate Partner Violence Research Collaborative; Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) ; PHND; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
Little is known about whether reductions in intimate partner violence (IPV) from cash transfer programs persist over the longer term. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we show that a program providing poor women in rural Bangladesh with cash or food transfers, alongside nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), led to sustained reductions in IPV 4 years after the program ended. Transfers alone showed no sustained impacts on IPV. Evidence suggests cash and BCC led to more sustained impacts on IPV than food and BCC – through persistent increases in women's bargaining power, men's costs of perpetrating violence, and poverty-related emotional well-being. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; G Cross-cutting gender theme; Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) ; PHND; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of Alive & Thrive Nigeria's infant and young child feeding (IYCF) behavior change communication (BCC) activities, including interpersonal communication in health facilities, community mobilization, and mass media, on early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, and minimum dietary diversity. METHODS: Local government areas in Kaduna and Lagos States were randomized to intervention or comparison and cross-sectional surveys of households with children aged 0–23 months [N = 6,266 baseline (2017), N = 7,320 endline (2020)] were conducted. Difference-in-differences and post-hoc baseline-endline models were used to measure intervention impacts. RESULTS: Difference-in-differences models showed no significant differences between the intervention and comparison areas in early initiation of breastfeeding (both states), exclusive breastfeeding (Kaduna), or minimum dietary diversity (both states). In Lagos, an 11.5 percentage point increase in exclusive breastfeeding in the intervention compared with the comparison area trended toward significance (P = 0.08). At endline, exposure to interpersonal communication, community mobilization, and mass media did not differ by study area in either state. Given the overall lack of differences in intervention exposure by study area, post-hoc baseline-endline analyses were performed with the study areas combined and increases were detected in early initiation of breastfeeding (Kaduna 40% to 46%, P = 0.05), exclusive breastfeeding (Kaduna 25% to 43%, P < 0.001), and minimum dietary diversity (Kaduna 20% to 41%, P < 0.001; Lagos 37% to 58%, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This evaluation found minimal impacts of the Alive & Thrive intervention on IYCF practices in the difference-in-differences analysis because of intervention spillover to the comparison area. Increases in IYCF practices from baseline to endline were substantial and are likely attributable to the intervention, which was the major ...
