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Social and Behavior Change for Nutrition

A woman holds her child. Source - SPRING/Bangladesh.

Programming that aims to facilitate changes in behaviors and social norms—referred to as Social and Behavior Change (SBC) — is an important part of efforts to reduce malnutrition around the world. This course aims to demystify nutrition SBC design as well as share useful SBC-related resources.

Anyone who works with people in any system or sector can improve their work by building a strong foundation in SBC. Nutrition is no exception!

Note: We suggest you first complete Nutrition: An Introduction, as this course builds on concepts introduced in that course.

Objective

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  • Define social and behavior change (SBC) for nutrition
  • Identify what it means to take an SBC approach to nutrition
  • Recognize the process of prioritizing evidence-based nutrition behaviors to focus program design and maximize resources
  • Define the SBC process which applies social science and behavioral science to design, implement, and measure effective nutrition SBC programming
  • Identify the role of formative research to inform nutrition SBC program design
  • Recognize elements of an SBC strategy using a range of activities and a monitoring and evaluation section to improve nutrition behaviors for specific groups of people and programming contexts
  • Identify a case example of a nutrition program that influenced nutrition behaviors.

Time

  • 2 hours

Published/Updated

  • Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Course Authors: 

  • Emily Vance, USAID Advancing Nutrition

  • Ashley Aakesson, SPRING

  • Andrew Cunningham, SPRING

Course Managers: 

  • Lisa Sherburne, USAID Advancing Nutrition

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