Pathways to Improved Health

Barriers to change simultaneously exist and operate at multiple levels of the social system. Breakthrough ACTION South Sudan utilized a Pathways™ to Improved Health to identify causal pathways to health behavior outcomes via the socio-ecological model (SEM). SBC interventions were designed and tested across social ecological levels, as appropriate: at the individual, family and household, provider and facility, community and opinion leaders, and national and subnational levels.

Breakthrough ACTION South Sudan provided a tailored approach that:

• Integrated gender throughout the project

• Took a strengths based approach to building SBC capacity across all levels, including community capacity

• Used data for decision making at the community and programmatic level

• Provided a set of interlinked activities packaged together to achieve one goal

This framework links specific indicators to multiple outcomes and arranges intermediate outcomes in a gender analysis framework, providing a structure for organizing information about gender roles and relations.