Guest Editors:
Amanda Kalamar, Population Council
Foyeke Oyedokun-Adebagbo, U.S. Agency for International Development Nigeria
Laura Reichenbach, Population Council
Health service providers play a fundamental role in health promotion and disease prevention, care, and overall well-being of their clients and communities. Provider behavior change (PBC) interventions are pivotal tools to address underlying attitudes, motivations, values, biases, and other normative factors that influence the relationship between provider and client to ensure the delivery of effective and high quality of care.
In 2018, Breakthrough RESEARCH, USAID’s flagship social and behavior change research and evaluation project to drive the generation, packaging, and use of innovative social and behavior change research to inform programming, convened a series of consultations with 190 social and behavior change experts to develop a consensus-driven global research and learning agenda for advancing PBC programming. The research and learning agenda outlines a core set of prioritized implementation science questions related to PBC, such as “What works?” “How can it work best?” and “How can it be replicated, scaled, and sustained locally?” These questions, which have guided various PBC research, programs, and activities across health issues, have been and continue to be particularly relevant as health systems worldwide respond to COVID-19 and as the integral role that health care providers play within these health systems is highlighted and heightened.
This supplement highlights innovations in PBC research, programming, and evaluation, many of which are informed by the research and learning agenda. The articles in this collection consider how PBC is defined and understood, discuss measurement approaches, identify research and programming gaps and opportunities, and share research and evaluations related to PBC programming approaches with recommendations for the future.
Table of Contents
Six Recommendations for Provider Behavior Change in Family Planning
Heather Hancock, Olivia Carlson, Hope Hempstone, Bethany Arnold, Kamden Hoffmann, Xaher Gul, Kathryn Spielman
Methods and Measures to Assess Health Care Provider Behavior and Behavioral Determinants in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health: A Rapid Review
Leanne Dougherty, Sanyukta Mathur, Xaher Gul, Kathryn Spielman, Vandana Tripathi, Christina Wakefield, and Martha Silva
Applying a Power and Gender Lens to Understanding Health Care Provider Experience and Behavior: A Multicountry Qualitative Study
Pooja Sripad, Summer Peterson, Daoudou Idrissou, Martha Kamanga, Abigail Kezembe, Charity Ndwiga, Chantalle Okondo, Anja Noeliarivelo Ranjalahy, Natacha Stevanovic-Fenn, Charlotte E. Warren, Brady Zieman, Sanyukta Mathur
Harnessing the Power of Behavioral Science: An Implementation Pilot to Improve the Quality of Maternity Care in Rural Madagascar
Jana Smith, Marie Sandra Lennon, Madeline Kau, Anja Noeliarivelo Ranjalahy, Liliane Ingabire, Charlotte Warren, and Sara V. Flanagan
Modeling Pathways to Describe How Maternal Health Care Providers’ Mental Health Influences the Provision of Respectful Maternity Care in Malawi
Brady Burnett-Zieman, Charlotte E. Warren, Felistas Chiundira, Edina Mandala, Fannie Kachale, Christina Heather Mchoma, Alexander Mboma, Martha Kamanga, and Abigail Kazembe
Lessons From a Behavior Change Intervention to Improve Provider-Parent Partnerships and Care for Hospitalized Newborns and Young Children in Kenya
Charlotte E. Warren, Pooja Sripad, Charity Ndwiga, Chantalle Okondo, Felicitas M. Okwako, Caroline W. Mwangi, and Timothy Abuya
Results From a Multimethod Exploratory Scale Development Process to Measure Authoritarian Provider Attitudes in Democratic Republic of Congo and Togo
Martha Silva, Kathryn Spielman, Leanne Dougherty, Sethson Kassegne, and Amanda Kalamar