Social and Behavior Change Communication and Reproductive Empowerment Mapping: Brief on Key Findings

The Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) conducted a literature scan to explore the strengths and gaps of social and behavior change communication (SBCC) in reproductive health interventions for reproductive empowerment (RE). With this goal in mind, HC3 sought to find studies of interventions that met three main criteria: included SBCC activities, aimed at improving family planning or sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes and addressed RE concepts. Because RE is a new concept, terms related to empowerment (such as agency, rights, gender equality) were used in the search criteria.

The desk review included over 2,000 abstracts drawn from eight databases. Articles that were written before 2000, that did not include an actual SBCC intervention or that did not evaluate SBCC activities were excluded. A total of 59 studies were selected for HC3’s SBCC and Reproductive Empowerment Evidence Database and visually mapped onto the Reproductive Empowerment Conceptual Model.

This brief summarizes the articles included in the final SBCC and RE Evidence Database.

Social and Behavior Change Communication and Reproductive Empowerment Mapping: Brief on Key Findings