Evaluating USAID/Uganda’S social and behaviour change communication activity : evidence-based learnings and strategic recommendations

This evaluation explores how CHC"s design and implementation played a role in behavioral outcomes, how CHC coordination structures worked and contributed to increased capacity in SBCC, and how CHC has been able to generate and share evidence of effective SBCC practices with stakeholders. The evaluation followed a mixed method, non-experimental evaluation design, relying predominantly on qualitative data supported by quantitative evidence from both the national Lot Quality Assurance Sampling survey (LQAS) and CHC’s own Phase I/baseline and Phase II/endline surveys to understand what worked with respect to CHC, how and where it worked, and why. Findings showed CHC used “360-degree communication” to saturate the national and local media and leverage community- and facility-based communication channels. This resulted in very high levels of message recall. Obulamu (a national media campaign) can be found everywhere. In terms of coordination, two of CHC’s biggest achievements were: 1) helping to revitalize the SBCC technical working group (TWG) at the Ministry of Health (MoH) making it communication-focused as opposed to content-focused; and 2) streamlining the process by which SBCC materials get approved by the MoH’s Health Promotion and Education (HPE) Department. These achievements were highly valued by the MoH and partners. At the same time, coordination was affected by competing priorities of IPs who also had their own objectives, plans, and targets which sometimes did not segue smoothly with those of CHC. Additionally, goal posts were often moved in response to PEPFAR, many targets for which changed annually