 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Eckhard Kleinau, Dr PH, MD, Environmental Health ProjectII (EHP), 1611 N. Kent St., Suite 300, Arlington, VA 22209, (703) 247-8730, KleinauEF@EHProject.org
Despite recent declines, mortality from diarrheal disease continues to be too high with almost 1.5 million children under five dying every year, in part because morbidity has remained virtually the same in developing countries over the past 30 years. Although hygiene promotion is very effective in preventing diarrhea, it has not yet become a mainstream child health intervention. Recent findings from pilot interventions in the Dominican Republic have shown that key household behaviors such as handwashing with soap at critical times can improve between 20 and 50% within a few months and lower diarrhea prevalence substantially. While pilot projects are ideal for testing methodologies of behavior change, they often cannot answer questions about sustainability and scaling up. Programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Madagascar provide insights how hygiene promotion can be implemented at scale from the start within a broad primary health care and health and environment context. Key success factors include: 1) An enabling environment and institutional commitment to behavior change and communications; 2) Sound technical concepts, but flexible approaches and methods; 3) Local partners with a long-term commitment to community development and appreciative of participatory approaches; 4) A combination of hygiene promotion with improvements to water and sanitation hardware whenever possible; 5) Use of evidence to design interventions and attention to monitoring and evaluation. Results from baseline surveys and formative research are used to show how programs decided which behaviors to address and how data play a central role in social marketing desirable behaviors.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Behavior Modification, Disease Prevention
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.