Introducing the “66 Elements of BehSci” Card Deck 🃏: The first-ever behavioural science card deck tailored for immunization!
Changing behaviour means understanding the barriers, linking them to what works, and tailoring solutions for maximum impact. And yes, ‘there’s a card for that’!
🔎 Drawing from the most recent meta-analyses and evidence, the deck includes:
• Barriers to immunization
• Heuristics & biases
• Proven behavioural interventions
• Adaptable ideas from other sectors
• Popular BehSci frameworks
⚙️ How it works:
• Identify the barrier
• Match it with an intervention (or more)
• Layer in a heuristic to boost impact
• Link it all together into a draft behavioural approach for common immunization challenges
❓ Why? To make behavioural science simple, practical, and effective to increase immunization coverage in the real world.
🙏 Thanks to everyone who collaborated to this idea and its execution!
This is a beta version! Since we love feedback, please tell us what you think in the comments!
A huge congratulations to Ikhlass Mahdoubi who has just completed her CT Fellowship with us! 🎉 (but also 😭)
Passionate about behavioural science, Ikhlass was part of the first cohort of behavioural scientists to graduate in Morocco, and has been supporting several of our recent projects, including designing SBC strategies in the Marshall Islands, analysing prototype testing data in Eastern Europe for feedback mechanisms in schools, and designing interventions to improve the mpox healthcare journey in Burundi, Uganda, and DRC. Her curiosity, warm heart, and expertise in behavioural science make her a true force for good, and she sparked so much joy to our team in the 9 months she was with us.
Hearing Ikhlass share the impact the Fellowship had on her served as a powerful reminder of how transformative early career opportunities can be for recent graduates. We want to keep that ball rolling - we’d love to connect with more amazing university design and behavioural science departments to find our next rockstar intern. If you know any, please drop a note in the comments! 🎓
#BehaviouralScience #BehSci #earlycareeropportunities #behavioraldesign
📍 Our team is spread across about 10 countries. Here’s how much hotter it was than usual in a few of our locations last week:
Pau: +15°C (38°C vs. 23°C avg)
Paris: +15°C (36°C vs. 21°C avg)
York: +14°C (32°C vs. 18°C avg)
London: +12°C (33°C vs. 21°C avg)
Barcelona: +8°C (34°C vs. 26°C avg)
Montclair: +7°C (32°C vs. 25°C avg)
Nairobi: +5°C (27°C vs. 22°C avg)
🔥 🌊 Extreme weather is not just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. It worsens:
• Vector-borne diseases like malaria, dengue, and chikungunya — now appearing in areas once considered low-risk
• Water-borne illnesses due to disrupted sanitation and flooding
• Access to care as systems are overwhelmed, sidelining the most vulnerable
We’re committed to pairing behavioural science and human-centred design with climate-adapted strategies. The fight for health-for-all is now also a fight for climate justice.
#ClimateCrisis #GlobalHealth #Malaria #Dengue #ImmunisationAccess #Equity #ZeroDose #HealthJustice #BehavioralScience #SBC #HCD
🙋🏾♀️ Who’s excited about @zohrankmamdani winning the democratic primary in the race for NYC mayor? Turns out, one of our CT New Yorkers designed a typeface used by this wonderfully designed campaign!
✨ Our designer @matthewhindersanderson moonlights as a type designer. His font Union Gothic features as the “New York City” in Zohran’s logo and throughout the campaign website (designed by Forge Co-op).
👏 We couldn’t be prouder of Matthew being the change he wants to see! Supporting social justice and equity is needed now more than ever
🔗 Check out more of Matthew’s typefaces at his website - link in bio!
#DesignForChange #PoliticalDesign #Typography #typedesign #zohranmamdani
What’s happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis—it’s a public health catastrophe.
The UN Human Rights Office has documented a disturbing pattern of attacks on and near healthcare facilities, pushing Gaza’s health system beyond collapse and denying civilians even the most basic standard of care.
For many of us, it’s getting harder to watch. Harder to process. Harder to wrap our heads around the magnitude of what is actually happening.
This isn’t apathy 🫤, it’s psychology.
We might feel ourselves turning away - not out of indifference, but out of overwhelm. That’s ❤️🩹 psychic numbing and compassion fade (Paul Slovic); We might scroll past yet another image of devastation without flinching. That’s 😑 desensitization (Cantor & Sokolov); We might avoid the news altogether. That’s the 🙈 ostrich effect (Karlsson et al.); We might think, “What could I possibly do?” That’s 🔒 low self-efficacy (Bandura); We might quietly hope it will all resolve somehow, without us having to bear it. That’s 🤞 optimism bias (Sharot); And when the suffering feels far away - when the people affected are seen as different from us - we might not act at all. That’s 🚷 outgroup bias and moral disengagement (Tajfel, Bandura).
But knowing these patterns gives us a chance to interrupt them, and to choose awareness over avoidance. Psychology and behavioural science can also help us to stay human.
Push through the numbness:
🔁 Share verified facts
💬 Talk about it- find someone directly impacted. Listen
🧠 Stay present, even when it’s uncomfortable
We cannot talk about building a healthier world while turning away from its destruction.
hashtag#BehavioralScience hashtag#Gaza hashtag#HealthAsAHumanRight hashtag#Solidarity hashtag#Compassion hashtag#SBC hashtag#PublicHealth hashtag#SocialJustice
photo credit: Olga Cherevko/OHCHR
🇰🇪 In 2022, the World Bank and the Gates Foundation asked us to help boost COVID-19 vaccination rates in Kenya. The lessons we learned there can be applied to many outbreaks. When things are moving so fast and different stakeholders have different priorities, how do you align priorities, ever-changing data, and realities on the ground – while facilitating a process that makes the best decisions for those who need healthcare services most?
Read Part I of our case study — the first steps that led to Call for Change Kenya - a smart innovation challenge to connect public health with local innovation.
🔗 Link in bio
Facing a similar challenge? See our Datascape Tool to plot your own path (🔗 link in bio)
#BehSci #HCD #PublicHealth #GlobalHealth #VaccinationStrategy #BehavioralScience #Kenya #PublicHealth #outbreakpreparedness
#Kenya #CallForChange #GlobalHealth #COVID19 #Vaccination #HealthStrategy
These days, good news seems hard to come by. It takes a lot of energy and intention to find it. But we must. Because there is no way out of the darkness, without a little light.
It won’t be easy. Death and destruction seem to dominate our feeds. But these positive news sources are lightening our load, and our worldview:
@rtbcheerful@optimistdaily@yesmagazine_@goodnewsnetwork
Here’s to a brighter 2025 💡
That's a wrap on recruitment! Thank you to our wonderful community for spreading the word and throwing your hats into the ring — the thoughtfulness you put into your applications and the excitement you shared about working with us made this process both extremely difficult and delightful.
Our global team is now three brains stronger, which is necessary to help us schedule with three more timezones in mind. Please welcome OL Jonatan Beun, Aishwarya Shashi Kumar and Ikhlass M�ahdoubi to the stage!
Our new lead Behavioural Scientist, Ol will be zooming in from Mexico City, to play a key role in designing how we collaborate with communities, partners and clients to conduct research and translate that data in to insights to help us build solutions that stick, scale, and celebrate context.
By his side but across the globe is Aishwarya, our new Behavioural Science Associate located in Bangalore. She's more than ready to rise to the challenge of finding meaning in the messy web of human behaviour.
Finally, our not-so-secret weapon is our new research and coordination fellow, Ikhlass. She's based in Rabat and started a few months ago and already feels like an essential part of our team.
#Recruitment #RemoteWork #BehaviouralScience
The final episode of The ABCs of SBC is out now! For this year, at least 😉
This episode brings together experts from all corners of vaccination — from demand, to confidence, to misinformation. Francine Ganter, Heidi Larson, and @saad.b.omer join @qaaliciid to discuss what we’ve achieved since the Expanded Programme on Immunization began 50 years ago, and what #SocialandBehaviourChange can help us achieve as we navigate a world still recovering from COVID-19.
This episode is a reminder that the first step in supporting families to protect themselves from vaccine-preventable diseases is respecting their views, no matter how different.
A big thank you to our partners at @unicef for making this episode, and the last few, possible and absolute perfection! If you haven’t listened to the others, we highly recommend them for the train, plane, car, boat, or walk to see your loved ones this holiday season. The episodes are real empathy-builders, the perfect and necessary primer to quality time with loved ones.
🔗 Click the link in our bio to listen 🎧
#SBC #Immunisation #VaccineConfidence #VaccineHesitancy #Trust #SystemsStrengthening #Vaccination #COVID19 #Podcast #Misinformation
#EPI50
From the parcel and to the people! 📦 ➡️ 👨🏾🏫
But there's a lot more to love about UNICEF's latest magazine than that fresh-from-the-printers smell.
Over the last year, we have worked alongside a number of brilliant SBC practitioners, designers, and youth activists from all over the globe to bring you a big, long love letter to Social and Behaviour Change. 💌
But make no mistake, it’s not 80 pages of praise and platitudes. The magazine doesn’t hold back from criticisms and ideas for how SBC can go further, faster, and respond better to the complex challenges that lie ahead for our planet. We poured love into every page, bringing you behind the scenes of pivotal SBC projects, and sharing key evidence, insights and learnings through spreads that engage and inspire. Did we mention there’s a crossword? And a scavenger hunt?
And you don't need to hold the magazine to experience its gravity 🔗 Click the link in our bio to access the digital version and bonus material!
@UNICEF #MagazineLaunch #SocialandBehaviourChange #SBC
What can caregivers teach us about immunisation?
A lot. They are the ones in charge of making sure the children they look after get the vaccines they need. They have to remember appointments, figure out transportation to and from the clinic, and interact with health workers to get answers to their burning questions.
That’s why we’re working with @unicefhaiti researchers to interview caregivers in Southern Haiti. They’re testing out the human-centered research protocol we helped @uniceflac develop, with tools that help practitioners collect and analyse social and behavioural insights.
They're using these tools to figure out what's keeping caregivers from returning to the clinic after their first visit and what could make their vaccination experience more positive.
We’ll use their findings, along with data from other countries throughout the region, to find patterns, zero in on the most salient immunisation challenges, and provide recommendations so that future immunisation programmes are designed with the needs of caregivers, and their little ones, in mind.
@unicef #BehSci #HCD #PublicHealth #Immunisation #CommunityEngagement #SocialandBehaviourChange #SBC #FieldResearch #Research
Are you in the market for an awesome workplace? You’re in luck — we’re in the market for some awesome people.
Check out our open roles at the link in our bio 🔗 Recruitment closes September 1st
#BehaviouralScientist #BehaviouralScience #Internships #Research #DesignResearch #Storytelling #FullTimeRoles #RemoteWork #Hiring #BehSci #HCD #PublicHealth
