By Hassan Zaggi
Following the successes recorded in the stage one of the project onapplication of behavioural science to strengthen demand for Primary Health Care Services (PHC) services, the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, has advocated for the scaling up of the project.
He made the call at the official close-out ceremony of the NPHCDA-BMGF strengthening demand for PHC project in Abuja, Wednesday.
According to Dr. Shuaib, “base on the mutually agreed milestones, I am confident that the team has made sufficient progress on stage 1 of this project, and should therefore consider taking immediate steps to develop the scale up plan.
“It is my hope that, as envisioned in this project, its impact will provide more justifications for the institutionalizing of behavioral science in our PHC demand generation strategies from conceptualization to implementation in the future.”
Shuiab who was represented by the Incident Manager of the National Polio Emergency Operations Center (NEOC), Dr. Usman Adamu, recalled that the project was initiated in 2020 in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation (BMGF) in order to build on NPHCDA’s existing PHC demand generation strategies, strengthen the capacity of SPHCDBs (including LGAs/HFs), and trusted community influencers to effectively apply modern behavioural science approaches, advocacy, and communications to sustainable PHC demand generation in a COVID-impacted world.
The implementation of the first stage of the project, which included funding for two years to cover start-up support in 2 states – Niger and Gombe, commenced in 2021.
“This is a little over two years since then, and I would like to commend the BUSARA Centre for behavioural economics for its exemplary leadership of the implementing consortium.
“I also commend other members of the consortium – CCSI, Solina , NTLC and, especially NPHCDA for the excellent job they have done on this project,” he said.
The NPHCDA Executive Director regretted that demand for PHC services in the country has remained sub-optimal due to reasons ranging between social, cultural and geographical barriers, poor quality of care, and low level of trust in our health system arising from misinformation and disinformation.
“The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 made the situation worse by bringing about social restrictions and heightening public distrust in the health systems.
“This impacted negatively on health seeking behaviours, and further weight down on demand for services especially at primary health care and community levels in the country.
“As we strove through COVID to recover demand for services using our existing structures and strategies, we were also working closely with BMGF on how we could explore behavioural science approaches and human-centred designs for a more evidence-based interventions that would lead to long term desired changes in health seeking behaviours.” Dr Shuaib noted.
Speaking, the Country Director, BMGF, Dr. Jeremie Zoungrana, explained that: “The Gates Foundation has one overarching goal, and that is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life.
“Today’s event is a great example of the type of partnerships that we embark on to deliver on our mission.
“We learned about the behaviors and beliefs that influence some of the barriers and issues preventing people from accessing health care services and the COVID-19 vaccines during this time, such as cultural, religious and social norms, misinformation, disinformation, and just widespread hesitancy.”
