Nutrition and Behavior Change for Jan Andolan

At the request of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the Harvard Chan India Research Center has partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to document and evaluate these promising practices for social and behavior change communications (SBCC) practices. Led by Dr K. Viswanath, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the project aims to:

• Delineate Current SBCC Strategies: Identify and analyze existing SBCC strategies used to promote nutrition-seeking behaviors within communities.
• Identify Promising Practices: Discover ‘promising practices’ for Jan Andolan that are geographically and culturally proximal to the target populations.
• Disseminate Effective Strategies: Share the best strategies for context-specific mass mobilization, including effective media, channels, and strategic messaging to scale and promote Jan Andolan.

To capture a wide range of SBCC practices at regional and local levels, the study adopts a mixed methods approach that includes systematic surveys of key stakeholders, in-person consultations to document local practices, expert panels, key informant interviews, focus groups, and experiments with the target audience for POSHAN Abhiyaan.

The study will be conducted in three phases:

1. Phase 1: Conduct national consultations with key stakeholders, including development partners and inter-ministerial groups from various departments and ministries. This phase also involves a comprehensive review of studies and practices related to SBCC efforts in maternal and childhood nutrition, drawing from both scientific and grey literature. 

Three national level consultations were conducted with the aim to seek stakeholder inputs on developing the framework for identification of promising practices as well as development of criteria to evaluate the said practices auxiliary to promoting and scaling Jan Andolan. The national consultations were held with the following three groups: Development Partners (BMGF, UNICEF, Tata Trusts, SBF, and Piramal Foundation); Representatives from Central Ministries (Ministry of Women and Child, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and NITI Aayog); State Partners (Over 22 states and UTs participated with presentations from UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Assam)An outcome of this phase was the launch of an e-book titled “The First 1000 Days of Life: Lessons from Social and Behavior Change Communication” in September 2021, which analyzes literature, population-level data, and promising practices to enhance nutrition-seeking behaviors within communities.

2. Phase 2: Undertake state-level consultations and conduct primary data collection. This phase included focus group discussions in Assam, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh with target groups such as pregnant women, lactating mothers, family influencers, and community health workers. The aim of the consultation was to seek stakeholder inputs on identifying “promising practices” on Social and Behaviour Change Communication adopted at the district, village, and community levels. The interim report, “Jan Andolan for Maternal and Child Health: Communication, Beliefs, and Practices among Pregnant and Lactating Women,” outlines findings and policy implications from these discussions and has been shared with the Ministry of Women and Child Development. These insights will inform the development of effective messages and the selection of key platforms to promote improved nutrition-seeking behaviors among women and children in India.

3. Phase 3: Develop and disseminate the messages and toolkits based on the activities and findings from Phases 1 and 2.