Blueprint for More Sustainable Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Systems

"...vision is sustainable, country-led SBC systems that can support the oversight, design, implementation, and evaluation of SBC initiatives that enable individuals, families, and communities to embrace and maintain healthy behaviors, while also driving positive social change and development."

The Blueprint for More Sustainable Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Systems, or the SBC Blueprint, is a practical document guiding country-level actors and stakeholders to develop more sustainable SBC systems within their contexts. An SBC system includes an interconnected set of actors and networks working across sectors and administrative levels so that individuals, families, and communities can embrace healthy behaviours and effect positive change. The SBC Blueprint offers an approach for future SBC capacity and systems strengthening agendas. It can be used to advocate for prioritising SBC and investing in SBC capacity and systems strengthening at the global and country levels.

Foundational to FHI 360's process of developing the SBC Blueprint was the engagement of a wide cross-section of the SBC community, undertaking this endeavour with government (Nigeria Health Promotion Division), academia (University of Witwatersrand School of Public Health), and private sector (African Society for Social and Behavior Change (AS-SBC). Together, FHI 360 and partners gathered sector-wide input through: 12 virtual listening sessions, held with approximately 90 participants; multiple online polls that received over 1,100 responses; an SBC stakeholder dialogue held at the International SBCC Summit in Morocco, which enabled deeper dialogue with more than 45 SBC practitioners and experts; and external reviews with SBC experts.

In that vein, the SBC Blueprint emphasises the need for cross-cutting coordination, stronger connections and collaboration between supply and demand-side interventions, and engagement of health and non-health actors to better address social and structural determinants of health, while strengthening local capacity. It articulates the following pillars of a sustainable SBC system:

1. Bolstering SBC technical capacities;
2. Enhancing governmental, civil society, and community structures for SBC; and
3. Fostering enhanced multisectoral collaboration and programming

The SBC Blueprint [PDF] consists of a set of tools designed to support users to undertake a five-step process to imagine, design, validate, implement, and monitor a country-level SBC Blueprint themselves. These steps include:

Step 1

• Develop Your SBC System Vision [PDF, 3 pages]: supports users to adapt the global SBC Blueprint vision for their context and needs, ensuring it fits their values, systems' needs, and goals.

Step 2

• Map Your SBC System [PDF, 4 pages]: supports users to map actors within their SBC system. An example SBC systems map, with a focus on health, is included with this tool.
• Map SBC System Connections [PDF, 5 pages]: supports users to examine and document the connections needed with sectors outside of the health sector to achieve health-related SBC outcomes.

Step 3

• Assess and Prioritize Your SBC System Attributes [PDF, 16 pages]: supports users to systematically assess key attributes of strong SBC systems within their context and determine how present these attributes are within their own SBC system. This assessment can help prioritise system attributes to strengthen based on identified gaps and can spark brainstorming on potential changes.
• Assess and Prioritize Your SBC System Functions [PDF, 14 pages]: supports users to systematically assess their SBC systems' performance against the set of functions/sub-functions that it needs to carry out. The tool enables users to score the level of their SBC systems' readiness in carrying out these functions, while identifying SBC systems' strengths and gaps. They can begin to explore how to strengthen and address identified gaps and to prioritise the SBC system functions and sub-functions that need to be strengthened.

Step 4

• Develop Your SBC Blueprint Implementation and Monitoring Plan [PDF, 6 pages]: supports users to create an implementation and monitoring plan that will guide activities in support of achieving their SBC system vision. This process includes identifying steps to support reaching identified objectives, delineating responsible parties for each step, identifying resources that are needed, and outlining performance (output) indicators and desired outcome indicators.

Step 5: Implement, Monitor, Evaluate, and Adapt - This step focuses primarily on implementation and adaptive management practices to ensure that work toward achievement of the national SBC Blueprint is progressing and periodically tracked and updated.

It is FHI 360's intent to expand the set of tools included in the SBC Blueprint over time. Future resources will include:

• SBC planning and budgeting tools
• Capacity strengthening assessments and tools to support development of newer SBC-Blueprint-related competencies
• Advocacy tools to increase SBC prioritisation and financing
• Multisectoral coordination tools
• Adaptive management and monitoring and evaluation tools