Behavioral Science and Cultural Consensus
Development strategies aimed at behavior change will miss the mark if they do not adequately identify culture and plan interventions that factor in the cultural nuances around particular behaviors. As management guru Peter Drucker once said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
To best serve our clients, we must go beyond mere clinical provision and sensitization to also accommodate the social culture where we work – embracing family structures, community norms, and institutional relationships. Further, to deliver quality care, we must be able to engage the input and participation of our clients as partners in improving health.
This online event presented a variety of applied effective approaches to address the challenges above.
Presenters:
Andrew Gall and Carol Karutu, IntraHealth International, and Rahin Khandker, Ideas42 spoke about the meaning of behavioral science and how we can collectively harness it to strengthen our global health programs and improve our results. They explored how programs influence the behavior of health workers and community members and how interventions can systematically nudge people to make healthy decisions.
Peggy Ochandarena, Chemonics International presented an approach she and her team are using to understand culture and design interventions around that understanding. In partnership with anthropologist researchers at Arizona State University in their Global Impact Collaboratory (GIC), Chemonics and partners have piloted the use of the ‘cultural consensus method’ to identify the culture around behavioral interventions; and Chemonics projects have used the findings in designing interventions. Ms. Ochandarena explained the method and discussed conditions for its optimal use through three case study examples.