WASH Integration Modelling in India

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is the second leading cause of death in children under five worldwide. Safe WASH is a prerequisite to health that also contributes to livelihoods, school attendance, and dignity, helping to create resilient communities living in healthy environments. To improve WASH in India, Scope is collaborating with Jhpiego to strengthen the acceptance and adoption of government-recommended healthy hygiene and WASH practices in health facilities and communities in Nagaland.

The project is part of the USAID’s health system strengthening project NISHTHA: Transforming Comprehensive Healthcare in India, implemented by Jhpiego in collaboration with Unilever. Our team is co-designing and implementing a WASH integration model in selected health facilities and social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) interventions across 100 primary health centres in NISHTHA’s intervention state. The project seeks to demonstrate the impact of SBCC components for enhancing knowledge, attitude, and practices that improve the uptake and adoption of recommended WASH behaviours. The model will be replicable for further scaling across additional states through the NISHTHA project.

Project approach

We are taking an ecosystem approach to the design and integration of WASH practice. This includes understanding and building new interconnected SBCC interventions across different tiers of interactions and facility spaces. Our participatory approach ensures that the finalised WASH SBCC model and interventions are based on lived experience and responsive to the local context, government priorities, and target audience needs.

1. Discovery to create a contextual understanding of WASH-related barriers and opportunities as well as define behavioural influencers and drivers for the change needed to evoke improved healthy hygiene practices.
2. Asset and Content Production to create WASH SBCC intervention concepts based on the Discovery phase insights as well as develop an interlinked portfolio of digital content for target audiences.
3. Piloting to test and iterate creative SBCC interventions and content as well as identify strategic considerations for target audience engagement based on Asset and Content Production phase concepts.
4. Implementation and M&E Support to deploy the SBCC campaigns in Nagaland in collaboration with Jhpiego and NISHTHA partners, supervise the implementation, and align implementation outcomes with M&E objectives.

Project outcomes

Scope will deliver a scalable, unique SBCC campaign model and content, including target audience-adapted messages and a digital content toolkit for further rollout by NISHTHA project partners. We will also provide a set of tested SBCC interventions facilitating the adoption of recommended healthy hygiene and WASH behaviours among service providers and community members. In addition, we will develop an M&E framework for impact measurement purposes.