A randomized evaluation found that a simple and informative letter sent to clinicians reduced opioid prescriptions filled up to four months later by 9.7%, compared to prescriptions by clinicians not sent a letter. Clinicians who received a letter were also less likely to start a new patient on opioids and less likely to prescribe high-dose prescriptions.

This board game was recently released and has potential to foster debate about a difficult to discuss subject through the use of a game board, pieces, and cards. The game designer further hopes that it will inspire and empower women to speak up and pursue what they would like in life including education, careers, and love marriages.

Women tell the facilitators that their husbands have changed after attending the workshops.

The featured woman farmer now grows kale, spinach, amaranth and tomatoes in her vegetable garden, and her family consumes them almost daily.

Using human-centered design, the initiative created a TB clinical decision support system to improve intensive case-finding and treatment initiation among patients living with HIV. The system was implemented in 3 pilot sites and then 68 HIV clinics in Western Kenya. An RCT is underway to evaluate its impact.

Students in intervention schools were more than 7 times more likely to use soap for washing hands at school toilets than control schools.

The program increased vaccination uptake through an invitation card that reminds caregivers about their child’s immunization needs and schedule in a positive way. The review found that a celebration card is suitable for its purpose and acceptable to both healthcare professionals and to caregivers.

Positive changes from bystander interventions are reported across behavioral, cognitive and attitudinal measures, including statistically significant decreases in perpetration of violence and increased empathy for survivors.

The campaign evaluation found a nine percent increase in reported account ownership among low-income women who viewed the media and materials.

Villagers now walk 15 minutes, instead of several hours, to have children vaccinated, and the nurse no longer has to walk two hours each way carrying a heavy case. Launched in 2018, the plan is to train local pilots and help the Ministry of Health to build its own drones by attaching mail order engines to carbon fiber wings that can be produced by a 3-D printer.  The initiative may be expanded to many more islands in the future.

Current use of two methods of contraceptives increased among young women with children: male condom and combined oral pill use; but among young men only their partners’ use of oral pills increased. Knowledge increased among both young women and young men, whether or not they already had children following exposure to the SMS intervention. The SMS had no effect on young people's confidence or self-efficacy to perform contraception-related tasks. 

Receiving a “Last Chance” letter increased rates of survey completion by nearly 5 percentage points within a two-week period. Households who had yet to complete the flood survey were 15.5 times more likely to do so if they received the letter.

In program areas where community health workers received coaching and performance incentives, 70% of children (6-59 months) adhered to micronutrient powder use.

The existence of marketing placebo effects shows how fundamental the impact of communication and marketing actions can be. Marketing changes not only consumers’ perceptions but also the biological processes underlying their purchasing decisions.

Facility records showed that cervical cancer screening rates increased five-fold over the same period in the previous year. Most women who participated in an education session had seen the story-telling cloth, and the vast majority was able to accurately identify the imagery. They felt positive toward accepting the vaccine for themselves and their daughters when it is available in Mali.

At baseline, handwashing with soap at critical moments was only 1% in intervention and 2% in control groups. At 6-week follow-up, handwashing with soap at any of the critical moments rose to 19% in the intervention group versus 4% in the control group, a difference of 15 percentage points (p=0.005). At 6-month follow-up, the proportion of those handwashing with soap at any of the critical moments was 37% in the intervention group and 6% in the control group, a difference of 31 percentage points (p=0.002). The short intervention implemented in the control groups after the end of the intervention had the same effect on handwashing behaviors as the longer intervention.

Trained parents were four times more likely to accept family planning services for their adolescent children.

The study found a reduction in the number of foods reported by each person was seen with each successive day in the study. There was also a weekend effect such that participants reported significantly fewer foods between Thursday and Sunday relative to Monday. Although more food was reported in January, an overall seasonality effect from the holiday was not observed.

Advocacy and communications that do not barrage people with facts and fears, but instead fosters discussion through trusted messengers, often people not traditionally engaged in the issue, and locally meaningful discussions and concrete actions can move people toward curiosity and resolve, and thus behavior change.

The review found evidence that some of the measures implemented to help people drink fewer SSBs have been successful, including the labels which are easy to understand, limits to the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages overall and through food benefits, price increases in restaurants, stores and leisure centers, and promote healthier beverages in supermarkets and conduct community campaigns. Ensure availability of low-calorie beverages at home.

In intervention areas, people had lower acceptability of interpersonal violence (IPV), and women had fewer experiences of IPV in the past year, compared to control areas including significantly less high intensity emotional aggression and controlling behaviors, and cessation of physical, sexual and emotional IPV where it was previously occurring. The analysis found that interpersonal communication with community-based change agents and social network members were most effective in facilitating individual and collective change.

The evaluation found significant improvements in some behaviors including early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, minimum meal frequency and minimum dietary diversity. Results showed a dose-response relationship for dietary diversity, meal frequency and minimum acceptable diet. Health post visits were associated with greater early initiation of breastfeeding while three or more home visits was associated with improved complementary feeding behaviors. Caregivers exposed to four or more communication channels were more likely to achieve a minimum dietary diversity and minimum acceptable diet.

Technology specific variables (e.g. yield potential and acceptability) are associated with greater adoption of the behavior. The findings call for increased emphasis on sharing information, field demonstration, and farmers’ participatory research and training programs to popularize new inputs as well as offer more choices in varieties. Such programs ultimately help farmers develop more profit-oriented behavior which are necessary to reach long-term goals.

The research found that feedback was most effective when it was framed in terms of losses, and that a lower frequency of feedback does not reduce efficiency.

Compared to non-viewers, men and women who viewed community theater performances were significantly higher fertility awareness, more likely to have sought information about family planning methods from a provider, and significantly more likely to report intent to use modern family planning method (45% of viewers compared to 9% of non-viewers). Women who viewed the performances reported higher couple communication on birth spacing.

All of the children in the participating households consumed milk and households’ incomes through the sale of goat products and sub-products.  Ongoing technology transfer, continuous introduction of improved goats, and support for the commercialization of milk in major market.

The application of gamification principles in a priority-setting exercise produced valid and useful results while enabling rapid, easy, and engaging data collection of knowledge and attitudes. In addition, provision ofimmediate feedback and group discussion of the basic results are likely to increase social capital and may strengthen social relations among participants.

Reminder messages led to a 30 percent increase in voter participation.

All behaviors improved, for example, exclusive breastfeeding increased from 49% to 83%. Interpersonal communication significantly increased positive outcomes; a greater proportion of mothers practiced recommended behaviors when they had face-to-face contact with frontline workers and were exposed to TV spots compared to mothers who saw only the TV spots.  The intervention suggests that “more times and ways” a family would be touched with the same recommendations, the more likely they would be to adopt the behaviors.

Impact:  The results showed that regardless of hospital site, the provider sitting at any point during an encounter improved client satisfaction and reports that the provider was polite, caring, listened and informed.

The evaluation found significantly higher dietary diversity among children under 5 years and women of reproductive age in households benefiting from traditional vegetable promotion and demand creation activities. There was found no significant impact of promotion activities on household dietary diversity. Authors hypothesize that this is related to food security; in times of scarcity these households prioritize food consumption by women and children. Nevertheless, the results suggest that scaling up promotional and demand creation activities to encourage consumers to grow and eat traditional African vegetables would be an important element in initiatives to increase dietary diversity.

Results show lower time and costs for the health care system, freeing up resources to strengthen the health system, and TB drug adherence comparable or even higher than in person visits.  In a study in California, US and Mexico, 93% and 96% of patients, respectively, adhered to their drug regimens while using video monitoring over an average of 5.5 months, comparable to those of patients monitored through in-person therapy.

The first phase of the national school-based HPV vaccination campaign was successfully implemented at scale: 87% of age-eligible learners in Grade 4 received vaccinations in 91% of public schools across South Africa. Programmers attributed the campaign’s successes to careful planning and coordination and strong leadership from the national ministry of health. Future implementation will require improvement in the storage and monitoring of vaccine doses, better communication of role expectations to all stakeholders, including planning for negative communication via social media.

Results showed 100% reductions in all the bacterial counts in the samples collected after 3 months in the second and third feedings of the observed study households but highest in homes with observations by field workers.  Reheating of food for the second and third feedings played an important role in reducing contamination in this context. Three months after the intervention, mothers maintained the hygiene of children’s complementary food.

Distribution through entrepreneurs was successful in achieving and sustaining high coverage and use; 86% of children sampled had consumed the product at least once in the previous 7 days. during implementation. Use decreased to 62% within three months after communication activities ended. While effective, more effective than a social business model tried at the same time, it  require consistent cultivation of markets and communication support.

This review identified innovative solutions to challenges to improve the quality of teaching and learning, and promote the widespread adoption of successful practices. Experiences suggest that teachers are more likely to adopt new methods when programs use a phased training approach and a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives may be needed to motivate teachers and improve teaching quality.

After two years, and countless haircuts, barbers have proved invaluable in engaging communities and increasing acceptance of routine immunization in the region.

Impact: Evidence of effective interventions to increase vaccination coverage include those which facilitate action (through reminders, prompts, and primes), reduce barriers (through logistics and healthy defaults), and shape behavior (through incentives, sanctions, and requirements).

Social contact-based education and outreach with the general public, students and providers lead to less stigmatizing attitude and behaviors towards people with a mental illness, including through reduced anxiety and increased empathy.

In urban Uganda, FSWs engaged in safer sex with clients when they perceived that they themselves were not living with HIV.  Knowledge of HIV‐negative status was associated with an increase in consistent condom use by 9.5 percentage points, while knowledge of HIV‐positive status was not associated with a significant change in consistent condom use (2.5 percentage points). Even in communities with high HIV prevalence, the majority of the population will test HIV‐negative. This suggests that HIV testing serves as a behavioral HIV prevention measure among female sex workers.

 In a year, Love9 reached just over half (53%) of young people. By the end, it recorded 2.5 million views on YouTube and over 550,000 likes on Facebook.

This project included 1500 rural schools across Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and is a potential model for other schools in India and around the globe. Not only is it cost effective and easily scalable, it is a simple, fun and exciting way for school children to nudge handwashing.

Surveys in seven countries found that the app was effectively marketed through social media campaigns. The app expands access to and choice of a modern method; over 33% of women surveyed who were using the CycleBead app reported that they had not been using a method during the 3 months prior to download.

Mothers experiencing psychological distress due to relationship programs say that they face more challenges breastfeeding, and need greater support. Engaging fathers through responsible parenting interventions may reduce mothers’ psychological distress and have a positive impact on child health.

In Mexico, people bought 7 percent less junk food than they would have if the tax had not been imposed.  In Hungary, junk food consumption decreased as a result of choosing a cheaper, often healthier product (7 to 16 percent of those surveyed), consumed less of the unhealthy product (5 to 16 percent), changed to another brand of the product (5 to 11 percent) or substituted some other food (often a healthier alternative).

91% of pre-service nursing students agreed or strongly agreed that the use of clickers helped them to better develop a better understanding of the subject matter when compared to traditional lectures.

Adoption of reliable hybrid maize seed increased by 8 percentage points.

After introduction of handwashing stations and materials, the hospital saw a general downward trend in neonatal sepsis.

Peer-based groups, such as Quality Circles, have the potential to improve quality of care and strengthen health providers’ capacity to provide a continuum of care by facilitating communication and local problem solving with peers.

This study shows that it is necessary to make the new technology compatible with local demand and the environment, and importantly the price of the new technology must be competitive with the existing alternatives.

Farmers that held more positive attitudes towards sheep management were more likely to have an active management style and had fewer ewes in need of further care at mid-pregnancy and weaning. The findings indicated that farmers’ attitudes toward management practices and perceived behavioral control influenced their decisions. These key attitudes should be addressed in future education strategies aimed at promoting change.

Enhanced counseling among pregnant and breastfeeding women did not have a statistically significant effect on condom use or HIV incidence among these women. However, in both intervention and control arms, condom use increased and STI and HIV incidence remained very low, suggesting that repeat HIV testing during breastfeeding supports prevention behaviors.

Prior to the endline survey, pre-results revealed that the process engaged all village members and potentially offers a low-cost, public health approach to prevent contamination of children’s complementary food.

The intervention in an urban area decreased sexual assault rates from 18/100 person years at baseline to 11/100 person years after 10 months among adolescent girls who participated, with no significant change in the Standard of Care group. Course participation also led to an increase in the disclosure of assaults enabling survivors to seek greater care and support.

Consumers heeded the warning labels to varying degrees, but most observed that their children, particularly the youngest, gained more positive attitudes toward the regulation and have become promoters of change in their families. This information contributes to better understand how regulatory actions may influence people’s consumer behaviors.

Attendance at the participatory ANC meetings stayed high, and led to increased delivery in health facilities. Many invited their partners for group meetings as well to get needed services such as HIV screening.

After one year, an evaluation found reduced pregnancy significant at the 5% level. Effects were largest at junior school and in rural areas.

The Indian government launched a “Clean India Mission (Rural)” in an effort to attain open defecation-free (ODF) status over five years, and has reached 314 ODF districts out of 644. Efforts continue to achieve full coverage through local and regional efforts that engage women’s collectives to build their own latrines and a youth-driven social media campaign.

By September 2018 over 67,000 women had been seen at least once, for 194,000 clinic visits (24,000 clinic visits in one year). As service provision is scaled up, so is the number of women reached. The proportion of young women has increased since the development of the “Young Sisters” program in 2014 supported by teen peer educators.  Increasing coverage and intensity of service delivery by strengthening community involvement and empowerment alongside increasing numbers of program staff led to increases in coverage, HIV status awareness and uptake and optimal use of treatment.

Children given the soap with a toy inside were four times as likely to wash their hands with soap after key events than the kids given toyless soap.

Caregivers who participate in the village saving program are more likely to have tested for HIV and know their own HIV status, and their child’s status. For example, in Nigeria, giving referrals for HIV testing to group members resulted in a 19-percentage point increase in HIV testing in the past 12 months compared to a referral alone. This shows the potential value of the integration or convergence of activities and services for caregivers.

Seoul has increased food waste recycling levels from 2 percent to 95 percent.

Compared to women with regular antenatal care, women who attended comprehensive antenatal education had greater self-efficacy and less fear of childbirth, more perceived support and control during birth, and less post-traumatic stress after childbirth.

Tailored checklists for infection prevention in health care facilities can save lives, when introduced in a human-centered way that engages providers to accept and own the procedures, and communicating openly across power hierarchies.

The project report suggests that by first identifying and engaging early adaptors through public contests, and open space for discussions and debates, and showing examples of positive behaviors in public, there is an increased opportunity to positively effect change by helping to normalize and model behaviors at a broader level. In this case, men and boys helped to normalize sharing household chores.

The study found that six to 10 months after the social transfer program, women receiving only transfers experienced no significant difference in any dimension of IPV relative to the control group, but women who had received transfers with communications activities experienced significantly less physical violence than either the transfer-only group or the control group.

Surveys found that the five targeted food hygiene behaviors increased six weeks after the intervention in the intervention group (43%), higher than the control group (2%).

The rate of children who did not complete immunization reduced significantly to < 10%. Caregivers provided reliable contact information and health workers positively perceived phone-based defaulter communications. Tracking a defaulter required on average 2 minutes by voice and Ksh 6 ($ 0.07).

OPOWER has harnessed the power of community norms and competition to influence household behaviors. By harnessing the individual’s desire to conform, OPOWER increased participation in energy efficiency programs from 5% to 80%, and the savings appear to be sustained.

Now used in 11 countries, hygiene communication for children is delivered through Sesame Street programs and characters.  Ministries of health and educators have also adopted the school-based curriculum. 

Engaging community leaders and community members in collecting data on a health problem usually seen as routine and something to tolerate can change how these health issues are perceived, including increasing risk perception. Additionally, by presenting and discussing the research findings with the community, there is an increased potential for effective advocacy and change.

The informal research suggests that people may be more willing to respond to scare or fear tactics to avoid doing a behavior, especially one-time events, such a receiving a vaccine. However, for taking action over a long period of time, fear tactics could be counterproductive.