Lessons from a successful national sanitation programme: the case of Nyumba ni Choo in Tanzania.

Universal access to hygienic sanitation is a Sustainable Development Goal for international development. However, many countries are liable to miss this target by the deadline of 2030. As provision and subsidy are prohibitively expensive, promotion is the tactic commonly taken by governments and stakeholders in many countries, even though it is often not effective at generating significant changes in sanitation coverage. A recent 5-year programme used an international consortium made up of organizations' experts in consumer research, creative communication, programme management and event implementation, media monitoring and programme evaluation, to achieve significant increases in the coverage of improved sanitation facilities throughout Tanzania, using adaptive programming. A number of lessons, outlined here, can be drawn from this experience which are likely to be applicable to promotion efforts in other countries and contexts and which can hopefully help countries to reach their sanitation targets. These lessons include the use of motivation and targeted expertise rather than reliance on training, the use of the theory of change to guide development processes, targeting of high-level government support, collaboration with private sector actors, testing and refreshing of messaging, continuous monitoring of on-ground conditions, use of multiple modes of outreach and branding of all programme outputs.

How to set up government-led national hygiene communication campaigns to combat COVID-19: a strategic blueprint.

While large-scale changes in population behaviour are required to reduce the transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus, the emergency context is not conducive to the sort of careful communications planning that would normally be required to meet such a task. Rapid strategic communications planning in a pandemic by governments is, however, possible and necessary. Steps include setting up a dedicated communications task force, mobilising partners and resources, developing a creative brief and theory of change and overseeing the creation, testing, roll out and revision of content. In this short guide, we argue that a minimum of strategic planning can be undertaken rapidly, and that good use can be made of simple principles of behaviour change, even during pandemics. Our aim here is to provide a blueprint that governments and their partners, especially in low-income settings, can follow to design, coordinate and resource national communications efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic immediately and for the longer term.