Val Curtis and Robert Aunger, doctoral researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, recently released a paper on the potential of using behavior change as the foundation for program design, with significant of implications for the deployment of humanitarian aid and development assistance.
Curtis, the Director of the Environmental Health Group, has a long-standing interest in the role of behavior in sanitation and hygiene, which is reflected in her academic writing on the issues, usually framed from an evolutionary perspective. Aunger has been interested in tropical disease control throughout his career.
Their most recent publication on the Health Psychology Review, only the latest in a robust bibliography, is titled “Behaviour Centred Design: towards an applied science of behaviour change.” Its abstract reads as a reflection of a long career of serving public health issues through academic research, put in broad words so it can be applied across fields. This paper might just become foundational on an “applied science of behaviour change.”
