Using Social Media to Drive Public Health Outcomes

Why should you conduct an SBCC campaign?

International development programs often use SBCC to drive public health outcomes – for example, to convince people that early childhood immunization, flu shots, COVID vaccines and boosters, etc., are safe and important. It can be used to convince pregnant women of the importance of prenatal care. It can be used to reduce acceptance of social norms around gender-based violence or to promote the importance of alternative fuels to protect the environment.

From late 2020 through 2022, CARE partnered with Meta to experiment with using social media as an SBCC modality. Together we addressed a diverse range of SBCC campaign topics such as COVID prevention behaviors, vaccine hesitancy, early childhood immunization, promoting maternal health, educating about positive nutrition, community trust, and reducing gender-based violence. CARE’s first campaign aimed to reduce COVID vaccine hesitancy across 19 countries. CARE country office teams joined Meta-led workshops to learn how to create relevant campaigns encouraging vaccine adoption. The country offices then developed locally led campaigns using best practices learned during the eight-week series. Some campaigns were tied to pre-existing, off-line programming.