July 2023 — Social and Behavior Change (SBC) efforts can help health systems more effectively engage communities, identify, and communicate their needs, build trust in the health system, and harness the collective power of communities to mobilize resources and structures to enhance health system performance and accountability. To this end, with the financial support of UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), UNICEF Zambia conducted a three-day SBC Capacity Building Workshop from 8-10 May 2023, drawing UNICEF’s SBC National Consultants and the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) Senior Health Promotion Officers from Zambia’s 10 Provinces and the Ministry Headquarters. The workshop was led by facilitators from UNICEF Zambia and ESARO, and MoH. 

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• Orient participants on the general immunization program in Zambia.

• Build the capacity of SBC practitioners in developing innovative demand-creation interventions.

• Develop SBC strategic plans for the enhanced uptake of immunization services in Zambia

• Share best practices in immunizations programmes in Zambia.

• Introduce the Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) and Gender mainstreaming conversation for further exploration.

Good Practice and Lessons learnt:

• The training provided a good interpersonal platform for SBC teams at national, subnational and UNICEF to share current trends and practices that are tailored to the effective implementation human-centred activities

• The training availed a good introspection forum for the MoH and UNICEF SBC Teams to clearly understand UNICEF support and engagements in supplementing governments efforts aimed at improving community involvement and participation in health programmes through social behavioural change practices including the key aspect on PSEA and Gender mainstreaming in our work. 

• The training also offered an opportunity for UNICEF to provide an understanding and foster collaboration between the SBC consultants deployed to Provincial Health Offices (PHOs) and MOH Health Promotion Officers 

Dr. Kalangwa Kalangwa (Acting Director of Heath Promotion-MoH) said: “The workshop will assist in strengthening social mobilization and community engagement for polio response in the country”. He added that the training zoomed in on how to package and tailor messages for different groups and engage local community influencers and leaders in the design of local solutions to address social norms and identify local solutions. He has urged the provincial Health and Population Offices (HPOs) to seek opportunities to cascade the learnings to the district and lower-level health staff in the coming months. 

Dr. Monjur Hussain, Chief of Health and HIV&AIDS UNICEF committed to supporting MoH to organize such learning events annually. This will create a momentum and critical building block for the institutional capacity-building on behavioural science action that UNICEF Zambia is currently initiating jointly with MoH and the University of Zambia (UNZA) building on the recent SBC Early Adopters support led by RO.