Malaria Consortium Pilots 'Positive Deviance' in Cambodia
12 November 2010London, 12 November: Malaria Consortium Asia has been providing technical expertise to national malaria programmes in the Greater Mekong Subregion, particularly in Thailand and Cambodia for developing and implementing monitoring and evaluation and behaviour change communication strategies for malaria prevention and control.
Malaria Consortium recently worked with the Cambodia’s National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control in piloting an innovative behaviour change approach, Positive Deviance (PD) on mobile and migrant populations in selected communities of Sampov Lun district, Cambodia. The PD Inquiry was conducted 3-9 August, 2010. To our knowledge, this is the first time that PD is being implemented for malaria prevention and control with a special focus on vulnerable mobile and migrant populations in Cambodia.
A variety of qualitative methods including focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were carried out with migrants and community members to establish normative behaviours and to identify the positive deviants, known as vithysas ariaboth komrouon (role models), from the community. A quantitative survey including 300 interviews with mobile and migrant workers was conducted to establish the baseline.
During the six month intervention period, locally identified positive malaria prevention and control practices will be shared widely in the community. The actual role models (positive deviants) and volunteers will conduct interactive health education sessions and community level seminars to share these behaviours with the community.
Lessons learned and evaluation of this pilot will inform the possible scaling up of this approach.
This article first appeared in the Positive Deviance Initiative October 2010 newsletter.
For more information, please contact Diana Thomas [email protected].
Photo above shows community members using role play as part of an interactive health education session
Photo above shows community members using role play as part of an interactive health education session
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