Bringing ethical thinking to social change initiatives: Why it matters

These interventions often address gender and other inequalities and the power structures that hold them in place. As interest and funding for NSI increases in lower and middle-income countries, their potential to yield sustained change is balanced by the risk of unintentionally reinforcing inequalities that violate human rights and social justice pillars guiding health promotion efforts. A review of 125 articles on ethical considerations in public health, public health, and human rights, where NSI actions intersect, indicated little guidance on practice. To address this gap, a set of ten ethical values and practical ways to engage ethically with the social complexities of NSI and the social change they seek were proposed. These values include recognizing the power differential between better-resourced organizations and lesser-resourced communities, acknowledging the heterogeneous mix of stakeholders in communities, and grappling with power dynamics before and during implementation. Community-based NSI typically use safe spaces and critical reflection to create and reinforce new and existing positive norms rooted within the values of the community. These interventions aim for incremental normative change at a community level, complementing social and behavior change strategies that address other individual, social, material, and material factors. However, the question of power is an important one for designers and implementers to grapple with, as community outsiders, before and during implementation. The risk of projects doing harm while trying to do good is a concern, and without clarity on what ethical thinking in NSI means and how to engage with ethics, there are limited ways to understand if key ethical questions are being addressed. The achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals may be compromised by programmes that unintentionally exacerbate the real challenges the SDGs seek to address. A literature review in the domains of public health, human rights, and social justice was conducted to identify frameworks and practical guidance in applied ethics to guide NSI. The review included a systematic search of PubMed, Google Scholar, and Google, and identified 125 articles on ethical considerations in public health, public health, and human rights. The review aimed to fill a gap in the literature by proposing a set of values for outsider organizations to more systematically inform NSI practice. The proposed values include recognizing the power differential between better-resourced organizations and lesser-resourced communities, acknowledging the heterogeneous mix of stakeholders in communities, and grappling with power dynamics before and during implementation. The values also include considering the perspectives of marginalized groups, acknowledging the complexity of social change, and recognizing the importance of community-led initiatives. The integration of ethical decision-making in the design and implementation of NSI is essential to ensure that programmes are effective and sustainable. A practical way to think about how to engage ethically with the social complexities of NSI and the social change they seek is to consider the perspectives of marginalized groups, acknowledge the complexity of social change, and recognize the importance of community-led initiatives. The proposed values and practical ways to engage ethically with the social complexities of NSI and the social change they seek are intended to provide a foundation for the development of practical tools and practical tools and to raise awareness of the need to engage with the ethical questions that arise in the design and implementation of NSI. The values and practical ways to engage ethically with the social complexities of NSI and the social change they seek are intended to provide a practical way to think about how to engage ethically with the social complexities of NSI and the social change they seek.