How to ... get one particular billion folks to wash their hands

Standard handwashing substantially decreases diarrhoea and pneumonia – the two most significant causes of youngster death globally. Photograph: Oscar Siagian/Getty

Really shifting people’s handwashing habits at scale is less difficult mentioned than completed. At Unilever, on the Lifebuoy wellness soap group, we have embarked on a large behaviour change programme to alter the handwashing habits of one billion individuals.

The target is ambitious both in its possible to save lives – handwashing with soap is the most cost-efficient way to prevent little one deaths from diarrhoea and pneumonia (the two biggest leads to of little one death) – and in its scale.

Lifebuoy’s Assist a Kid Reach 5 handwashing programmes are based mostly on a examined methodology. A clinical trial involving 2,000 households in Mumbai demonstrated the use of soap improved by as much as ten instances right after the programmes (handwashing promotion aimed at five-12 months-olds and free soap) had been implemented. They also led to a 25% reduction in the incidences of diarrhoea among young children aged 5, 15% reduction in acute respiratory infections and 46% reduction in eye infections.

In Bonsaaso in Ghana, Unilever and the Millennium Villages Undertaking launched a partnership in 2012 to promote handwashing with soap to virtually 500,000 men and women in 80 rural villages. The preliminary evaluation showed a 22% increase in handwashing amid young children on the programme, and also a spillover into homes, with mothers and fathers of these children using 18% more soap than the manage.

Much more lately, we took the Lifebuoy campaign to Thesgora, a village in Madhya Pradesh with 1 of the highest charges of diarrhoea in India. Soon after the programme, young children in Thesgora now wash their hands on two added events per day and 33% much more mothers have commenced washing their hands with soap far more usually. Diarrhoeal charges have also fallen substantially.

So what have we learned from our experiences? Right here are a five important lessons about implementing behaviour-change programmes that perform and can be deployed expense successfully at scale.

1. Base your programme on science

Behaviour change is a science and programmes want to be built on sound outcomes – the Mumbai clinical examine is just one illustration of Lifebuoy’s collaboration with bodies like the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medication. We use behaviour-modify theories and scientific truth and combine them with what Unilever does: communicating with customers.

2. If your audience is kids, make your material fun

Lifebuoy’s ‘School of 5′ was designed by cartoonist Craig Yoe, who has worked for MTV and Disney. This has helped to translate the science into entertaining resources for kids.

three. Make your programme worldwide, but locally related

Our programmes are created globally but need to have to work across various geographies and cultures. While we set the construction and standardise our communications, the input from regional teams is vital for programmes to be successful. For instance, although we use a key visual of an open hand welcoming school children in Pakistan, it is the signal of endorsement of the opposition celebration in one more nation, so we need to create distinct hand visuals.

4. Reach the influencers

Although the target group for us is under-fives, our capability to assist youngsters to attain 5 depends on reaching the influencers in their lives as effectively – their mothers, teachers, siblings. This is essential to ensure that handwashing behaviours are sustained.

five. Operate with partners that share your targets

We perform with a assortment of partners – Save the Youngsters, Unicef, Oxfam, Strategy, WaterAid – and governments to assist us reach exactly where the wants are the biggest. This enables us to discover from every other’s experience, share sources and, most importantly, attain more folks.

The goal of modifying 1 billion handwashing routines is a stretch, but we have the infrastructure, material and culture in area to expand numbers quickly and reach this ambitious target.

We need to have to continue creating a robust evidence base for handwashing in the publish-2015 era to make sure it stays on the agenda of national governments as a price powerful way to enhance little one survival. Publicising benefits like these from Thesgora and Bonsaaso are vital to extending the attain of these programmes, as is the continuous forging of partnerships to create and map out joint behaviour alter at scale.

Myriam Sidibe is worldwide social mission director at Unilever. Stick to @Myriam_Sidibe on Twitter.

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How to ... get one particular billion folks to wash their hands