Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria Risk Communication and Community Engagement Tools and Resources

Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria’s risk communication and community engagement interventions support the Government of Nigeria in preventing, detecting, and responding to public health emergencies. The project produced and implemented a coordinated package of social and behavior change interventions tailored to address specific public health emergencies and infectious diseases as part of these efforts.

  • To achieve this, Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria:
  • implemented a coordinated package of SBC interventions including mass media campaigns and community-level activities tailored to address specific public health emergencies including infectious diseases like Lassa fever, Mpox, and COVID-19.
  • strengthened the capacity of government, partners, healthcare providers, community leaders, and other community actors to effectively communicate health messages and facilitate behavior change during public health emergencies.

We’re sharing the resources we developed to implement the project’s interventions.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: August 13, 2024

Social and Behavior Change to Increase Tuberculosis Care-Seeking in Nigeria: Tools and Resources

In 2021, Nigeria accounted for 4.4% of the world’s tuberculosis (TB) cases, ranking sixth among nations with the highest case rate. About 500,000 Nigerians are infected with TB annually. Testing and treatment for TB are free at government health facilities in Nigeria. Despite this, Nigeria struggles to identify TB cases; in 2018, the country’s National TB, Leprosy, and Buruli Ulcer Control Programme (NTBLCP) was only able to track 24% of cases. Several factors have kept Nigerians from seeking care for cough and fever and getting tested for TB. People presumed to have TB often delay seeking care until the advanced stages of the disease, and those who do seek care tend to do so at patent and proprietary medicine vendors (PPMVs) and community pharmacies rather than health facilities.

Through a strategic package of SBC interventions, Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria has contributed to the NTBLCP’s goal of increasing the number of TB cases and is currently supporting 8 states in the country. Breakthrough ACTION has developed and implemented social and behavior change interventions to increase the number of tuberculosis (TB) cases identified in Nigeria. These resources can be adapted and used by professionals interested in using SBC approaches to address TB or practitioners implementing TB programs.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: August 13, 2024

Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria Malaria SBC Tools and Resources

In collaboration with the United States President’s Malaria Initiative, Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria worked with the Nigeria National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) and other partners to implement social and behavior change programs across a third of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Through community engagement, provider behavior change initiatives, and widespread media campaigns, Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria and the NMEP ensured communities and healthcare workers were motivated to prevent, test, and accurately treat malaria. Through community engagement, provider behavior change initiatives, and widespread media campaigns, Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria collaborated with NMEP to ensure that communities and healthcare workers are motivated to prevent, test, and accurately treat malaria. Here are resources developed by Breakthrough ACTION-Nigeria that can be used by others interested in leveraging the power of SBC into malaria programming.

Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: August 13, 2024

Optimizing Local Diets through Households and Market Pathways to Improve Nutrition for Women and Children

This guide is for the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)-funded Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) Implementing Partners (IPs) and is intended for use by a multi-disciplinary RFSA team. RFSAs typically include a food assistance resource transfer component, a key benefit of which is to support age-appropriate complementary feeding of children 6–23 months of age and improve women’s or household dietary diversity. However, to sustain these benefits in the long term, RFSAs often look to transition to using local alternatives. This guide aims to support RFSA IPs’ transition from providing resource transfers to using locally available, accessible, and affordable alternatives to sustain nutrition outcomes for women and children under age two. It provides resources, workbooks, templates, and tools with instructions on how to optimize the use of local foods to improve women and children’s nutrition and dietary diversity in a given program area.

Last modified: February 9, 2024

Language: English

Source: USAID Advancing Nutrition

Year of Publication: 2023

WHO recommendations on maternal and newborn care for a positive postnatal experience

This guideline aims to improve the quality of essential, routine postnatal care for women and newborns with the ultimate goal of improving maternal and newborn health and well-being. It recognizes a “positive postnatal experience” as a significant end point for all women giving birth and their newborns, laying the platform for improved short- and long-term health and well-being. A positive postnatal experience is defined as one in which women, newborns, partners, parents, caregivers and families receive information, reassurance and support in a consistent manner from motivated health workers; where a resourced and flexible health system recognizes the needs of women and babies, and respects their cultural context.

This is a consolidated guideline of new and existing recommendations on routine postnatal care for women and newborns receiving facility- or community-based postnatal care in any resource setting.

Last modified: February 5, 2024

Language: English

Source: World Health Organization

Year of Publication: 2022

Defining Social and Behavior Change Competencies for Multi-Sectoral Nutrition: A List for Assessing, Developing, and Evaluating Staff Skills

This tool identifies 52 social and behavior change competencies—knowledge, skills, and attitudes—that project staff must demonstrate to design, implement, and evaluate the SBC components of multi-sectoral nutrition programs. It seeks to help program managers define the competencies most relevant to their activities and identify skill gaps across their project teams, and then use those competencies to guide hiring decisions, identify areas for capacity strengthening, and track changes in performance over time.

Last modified: December 29, 2023

Language: English, French

Source: USAID Advancing Nutrition

Year of Publication: 2020

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (SOP) for Mental Health & Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Call Center

The COVID-19 pandemic has different effects on the health, education, and economic situation in the whole world. Bangladesh is also facing similar challenges including anxiety, fear, stress, etc. making the situation more complex. Health workers, who support active management of COVID-19, patients as well as those involved in preventing the spread of the disease, are also facing tremendous psychological trauma. Under this circumstance, having a uniform support mechanism for the Mental Health & Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) call service providers (helpline, call centers, telepsychology centers), in this Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is helpful.

The objective of the validated SOP is to have a standardized service mechanism/protocol for MHPSS call center support providers throughout the country.

Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: December 20, 2022

Communicating risk in public health emergencies: a WHO guideline for emergency risk communication (‎ERC)‎ policy and practice

These guidelines provide evidence-based guidance on how risk communication should be practiced in an emergency, including guidance to countries on building capacity for communicating risk during health emergencies. This includes guidance on: building trust and engaging with communities and affected populations; integrating risk communication into existing national and local emergency preparedness and response structures; and emergency risk communication practice—from strategizing, planning, coordinating, messaging, channeling, and different methods and approaches of communication and engagement, to monitoring and evaluation—based on a systematic assessment of the evidence on what worked and what did not work during recent emergencies.

This includes guidance on: building trust and engaging with communities and affected populations; integrating risk communication into existing national and local emergency preparedness and response structures; · ERC practice – It covers strategizing, planning, coordinating, messaging, channeling, and different methods and approaches of communication and engagement. It also touches on monitoring and evaluation – based on a systematic assessment of the evidence of what worked and what did not work during recent emergencies.


Communication du risque pendant les urgences sanitaires

Cette ressource offre des conseils stratégiques et pratiques de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) sur la communication des risques pendant les urgences. Elle souligne l’importance de fournir des informations exactes de manière précoce et fréquente par le biais de canaux fiables, dans des langues comprises par la population. Ces orientations permettent de s’assurer que les populations à risque comprennent comment se protéger, protéger leur famille et leur communauté des risques sanitaires.

Last modified: March 31, 2022

Language: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese

Source: World Health Organization

Year of Publication: 2018

Message Guide for Ebola Communication

This document compiles current information and key messages about the Ebola outbreak in Liberia to inform activities designed to raise awareness, mobilize communities, and promote safe behaviors to stop the spread of Ebola in Liberia.

Source: UNICEF

Date of Publication: September 30, 2021

Hulu Beteina Health Bazaars A Guide to Organizing a Hulu Beteina Health Bazaar in Schools

Hulu Beteina Health Bazaars are 2-4 hour long events designed to create opportunities for community members to learn relevant health information and access health services. The events are organized around selected schools in a community. Hulu Beteina Health Bazaars are designed to be slightly different from a typical community health fair.

The activities include fair/ carnival-like events designed to be family-friendly and open to all community members. The events are conducted in schools and serve to bring attention to health topics and services available to members of the community. Ideally, the Hulu Beteina Health Bazaars would coincide with already ongoing health days in communities where such events already exist.

The guide also includes annexes such as a sample of a detailed agenda, a materials checklist, talking points for the events speeches, and a message guide for the drama skit and gender activity. Remember that these are samples to help school coordinators and community organizers get started. The samples can and should be adapted by the organizers and communities to suit local needs.

Source: Communication for Health Ethiopia

Date of Publication: July 19, 2021