Setting out Sightsavers’ approach to behaviour change

Society-wide behaviour change is complex, and people are not always as rational or predictable as we might hope they would be! A person’s decision to practise (and keep practising) COVID-19 preventative behaviours are affected by a huge range of factors. People are influenced by their ability to understand and carry out the actions they are being asked to do, by the incentives they feel towards change, as well as by the wider society around them.

To address some of these challenges, COVID-19 communication by national governments have focused on emphasising the severity of the disease and the ease of transmission, as well as giving us ‘nudges’ to change our behaviours.

But during this pandemic, preventative behaviours are especially difficult to carry out in many of the contexts Sightsavers work in. Communities may not have easy access to water and soap to wash their hands more frequently and they may live in crowded housing with large multigenerational families. They may rely on daily income for food and are likely to hear rumours and misinformation from different sources, such as social media. For many people with disabilities, carrying out preventative behaviours could be even more difficult, and may require adapting for their own situation.

Our inclusive behaviour change journey

While COVID-19 has brought behaviour change into the spotlight, influencing people’s behaviours has always been at the heart of Sightsavers’ work with communities, schools, health centres and employers, and in the treatment and prevention of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

Social behaviour change is about understanding and influencing healthy and inclusive behaviours and providing a supportive social environment for these to flourish in. This means that we need to influence the behaviours of parents, young people, community leaders, teachers, health care workers and government officials, among many others, in order to influence whole communities. If we can encourage people to change their everyday behaviours, then we might get some way towards having healthier and more inclusive societies for men, women and children with and without disabilities.

As Sightsavers’ new behaviour change technical lead, I’m helping the organisation to understand and learn from what we’ve done so far. I’m guiding a process to think about how behaviour change can help us to deliver our ambitions to ‘Protect sight and fight for disability rights’ and where we might need to strengthen our strategies, approaches and capacity to deliver this.

We have a strong foundation to build upon, with examples of good practice in our work on NTDs, inclusive eye health, education and economic empowerment.