There is a well-known gap in public health and development work: people often know what they should do but still don’t do it. They know smoking is dangerous, yet they smoke. They know hand-washing prevents disease, yet they skip it. For decades, practitioners assumed that closing this gap was simply a matter of better information delivery. That assumption drove the first major model of development communication – and its eventual failure pushed the field to rethink everything. The journey from Information, Education and Communication (IEC) to Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) and finally to Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) is not just a story of changing acronyms. It is a story of deepening understanding – of individuals, communities, and the invisible social forces that shape every choice we make.
Table of Contents
- IEC: when information was the answer
- BCC: moving from information to motivation
- What BCC added to the mix
- The ceiling BCC hit
- SBCC: the holistic evolution
- The socio-ecological model at SBCC’s core
- Addressing social norms and gender dynamics
- From top-down to participatory
- IEC, BCC, and SBCC: the key distinctions at a glance
- Why this evolution matters beyond public health
IEC: when information was the answer
The earliest and most foundational model in development communication is IEC. Its core assumption was straightforward: if you give people the right information, they will change their behaviour. The model had three functions baked into its name – provide Information (the facts), offer Education (why those facts matter), and use Communication channels to spread the message as widely as possible.
Classic IEC interventions looked like public health posters saying “Don’t Smoke,” pamphlets about vaccine schedules, or TV spots about safe water. The logic was linear: awareness leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to attitude change, and attitude change leads to behaviour change. Campaigns such as those promoting condom use, vaccination, or healthy eating were delivered this way, relying on print media and expert-driven messaging pushed from the top down.
The problem was that this logic didn’t hold up in practice. IEC operated primarily as a one-way communication method, under the assumption that information alone would lead to behaviour change – but it did not take into account the role of social norms, cultural beliefs, or emotional responses that affect decision-making. Evidence showed that in many cases, even when people understood the message, health outcomes did not improve. The model treated humans as purely rational actors who would simply act on good information, which turned out to be a significant oversimplification.
BCC: moving from information to motivation
As the limitations of IEC became clear, the field evolved. IEC gradually evolved into Behaviour Change Communication (BCC), which went one step further – it was not just awareness-oriented but action-oriented. BCC brought in behavioural science. It asked not only “What do people know?” but “Why aren’t they acting on that knowledge?” and “What will actually motivate them to change?”
What BCC added to the mix
BCC introduced several important improvements over IEC. While IEC tended toward didactic information delivery, BCC engaged in participatory, dialogue-based approaches that involved communities in the process. It was firmly grounded in behavioural theories and models, recognising that multiple factors beyond knowledge – including attitudes, perceived self-efficacy, social norms, and structural barriers – influence health behaviour.
In practical terms, this meant BCC campaigns became more targeted and more strategic. Instead of a generic anti-smoking poster, a BCC approach might involve a campaign showing a role model refusing a cigarette to address attitudes, or a community workshop teaching mothers the correct technique for breastfeeding to build practical skills. The approach recognised that you had to work on why people weren’t changing, not just what they should change to.
BCC is defined as an interactive process with communities – integrated with an overall programme – to develop tailored messages and approaches using a variety of communication channels to develop positive behaviours and promote and sustain individual, community, and societal behaviour change. This was a substantial leap from IEC’s broadcast-and-hope model.
The ceiling BCC hit
Despite its advances, BCC still had a critical blind spot. BCC did not fully engage communities in a participatory manner, nor did it consider the broader social and structural factors that may prevent individuals from making changes. The strategy primarily sought to change the behaviour of individuals without addressing the larger systemic and cultural forces at play.
Consider a young woman who has been fully convinced by a BCC campaign to use contraception. She understands the benefits. She is motivated. But her husband forbids it. Her mother-in-law shames her for it. The local pharmacist, citing community norms, refuses to sell it to her. Her individual motivation is completely blocked by social walls that a campaign aimed at her alone could never dismantle. BCC, for all its improvements, still focused its lens too narrowly on the individual.
SBCC: the holistic evolution
Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) emerged as a direct response to BCC’s ceiling. It does not discard the previous models – it absorbs them and expands far beyond them. SBCC is a research-based, consultative process that uses communication to promote and facilitate behaviour change and support the requisite social change for the purpose of improving health outcomes. It is guided by a comprehensive ecological theory that incorporates both individual-level change and change at broader environmental and structural levels.
The addition of the “S” – for “Social” – is not cosmetic. It is meant to signify that individuals and their immediate social relationships are dependent on the larger structural and environmental systems: gender, power, culture, community, organisation, and political and economic environments. SBCC explicitly targets both individual behaviours and the social conditions that enable or block those behaviours.
The socio-ecological model at SBCC’s core
The theoretical backbone of SBCC is the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM). The SEM is UNICEF’s foundational model for social and behaviour change. It highlights the factors that influence both individual and collective human behaviour across five key levels: policy, society and environment; institutions and services; community; family and friends; and the individual.
This multi-level architecture is what makes SBCC fundamentally different from its predecessors. The Social Ecological Model, informed by Bronfenbrenner’s 1979 seminal work, recognises four levels of influence that interact to affect behaviour: individual, family and peer networks, community, and social/structural – where the latter includes leadership, health systems, resources, policies, religious and cultural values, gender norms, and income equity.
Addressing social norms and gender dynamics
One of SBCC’s most important contributions is its direct engagement with social norms – the unwritten rules that govern what is considered normal, acceptable, or expected in a community. Social norms can play a huge role in personal decision-making. People are heavily influenced by and concerned about the opinions and actions of others, and positive or negative social norms can determine whether someone adopts or rejects a behaviour.
Gender norms are particularly significant. SBCC explicitly integrates a gender lens into its design. Programmes working through the socio-ecological framework recognise that shifting focus from individual risk-taking to the contextual factors that render people – especially women and girls – vulnerable is essential. Effective gender-transformative SBCC seeks to foster critical examination of inequalities and gender roles, recognise and strengthen positive norms that support equality, and transform the underlying social structures and broadly held norms that perpetuate gender inequality.
A practical example: addressing female genital mutilation (FGM) purely through IEC – distributing information about its harms – rarely works because the practice is upheld by deeply entrenched community norms, not ignorance. An SBCC approach would engage women, men, girls, boys, and community leaders together to examine the existing gender norms and beliefs driving the practice, and co-create an alternative coming-of-age ritual that the community can accept and own.
From top-down to participatory
Perhaps the most radical shift SBCC introduces is methodological. IEC was a monologue; BCC was closer to a targeted persuasion effort; SBCC is a dialogue. SBCC extends beyond information dissemination – it aims for the full participation of individuals and communities to ignite tangible behavioural and social shifts, working closely with families, religious and community leaders, and frontline workers, recognising that genuine impact requires collaborative effort.
This means communities are not just the target audience – they are co-designers of the intervention. Community dialogues are held so people can surface the problem in their own terms. Local leaders, teachers, and elders are brought in as stakeholders, not just messengers. Local traditions – storytelling, street theatre, music – are used as communication channels because they carry cultural credibility that a poster on a clinic wall does not. When a community helps identify the problem and design the solution, they feel ownership of the change.
IEC, BCC, and SBCC: the key distinctions at a glance
The three models can be understood through their primary focus, communication style, and unit of change. IEC focuses on knowledge and awareness; it communicates in a top-down, one-way manner; and its unit of change is the informed individual. BCC focuses on individual motivations, attitudes, and skills; it uses participatory but still largely individual-centred methods; and its unit of change is the individual whose behaviour is being targeted. SBCC focuses on both individual behaviours and the social environment; it uses a consultative, community-driven, multi-channel approach; and its expected unit of change, per UNICEF’s definition, is the community itself.
Why this evolution matters beyond public health
It would be a mistake to see this evolution as purely a public health story. The shift from IEC to SBCC represents a broader philosophical change in how development workers, communicators, governments, and NGOs understand human behaviour. Providing people with information and teaching them how they should behave does not lead to desirable change. However, when there is a supportive environment with information and communication, then there is desirable change in the behaviour of the target group.
SBCC is now applied across domains far beyond health – from improving school attendance among girls, to reducing open defecation, to addressing child marriage, to climate-adaptive agricultural practices. Improving gender equality, community resilience, and social cohesion all require multi-sectoral, long-term programmes and social movements. Even changing individual behaviour requires significant shifts in the social and cultural contexts in which people live. SBCC gives practitioners the framework to pursue that kind of deep, durable change.
The progression from IEC to BCC to SBCC ultimately reflects a growing humility in the field of development communication – a recognition that we cannot educate or persuade communities into change if the structural environment around them makes that change impossible. Sustainable change means changing the environment, not just the individual within it.
What do you think? If IEC’s information-only model failed to change behaviour in many contexts, why do governments and institutions still rely heavily on awareness campaigns today? And given that SBCC requires deep community participation to work, what happens when the very norms a programme wants to change are held by the community leaders it needs as partners?
References
- https://socio.health/social-groups-and-family-health/behavioural-change-communication-healthcare-meaning-benefits-approaches/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8281832/
- https://global.comminit.com/content/defining-social-and-behavior-change-communication-sbcc-and-other-essential-health
- https://www.sbcguidance.org/understand/why-people-do-what-they-do
- https://sbccimplementationkits.org/sbcc-in-emergencies/learn-about-sbcc-and-emergencies/what-is-social-and-behavior-change-communication/
- https://www.sbcguidance.org/create/selecting-sbc-approaches
- https://sbccimplementationkits.org/gender/sbcc-gender-models-and-frameworks/
- https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/social-behavior-change
- https://www.texilajournal.com/thumbs/article/Public%20Health_Vol%202_Issue%203_Article%2010.pdf
- https://www.fantaproject.org/sites/default/files/SBCC-SNEB-webinar-Mary-Packard.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_behavior_change_communication
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