Where Do We Go Next? Behavioral and Social Change for Child Survival

The articles in this special issue of the Journal of Health Communication offer a comprehensive and nuanced survey of the extensive literature on behavior change linked to the improvement of global child health. The contributions are packed with empirical data and findings drawn from an extensive and scattered literature. This is not a small feat considering that behavior change and child health include large, unwieldy datasets located at the crossing of various technical areas and disciplines. Child survival brings together myriad specialties and public health programs as well as disciplinary approaches and concepts from across the social sciences. It comprises numerous health issues and diseases—from infectious diseases to nutrition, from health policy to quality of services. It includes dozens of behaviors—from hand-washing to antenatal care, immunization to the use of bed nets—performed by mothers, relatives, and health providers. Child health behaviors are affected by numerous factors at the individual, community, social, and structural levels: knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, cognition, social norms, access to health services, power inequalities, gender roles, and policies and procedures. Programs to address behaviors related to child health have been implemented in communities and countries with significant particularities and differences across the world. Interventions have selected a wide range of strategies and tactics—from peer education to media campaigns to mHealth—to tackle behavioral obstacles and contribute to improving the health of children, mothers, and caregivers. Identifying patterns amid this jumbled, chaotic body of evidence is not easy. It requires vast scientific and technical expertise, collaboration across disciplines and institutions, and familiarity with the heteroglossia of the literature on behavior and social change. There are no ready-made, straightforward conclusions waiting to be collected and shared. Instead, we find disconnected findings, different experiences, and parallel arguments produced by scholars and practitioners with widely different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds. The articles admirably organize the enormous body of evidence in coherent findings and arguments. They patiently dissect the data, connect the empirical and analytical dots, discuss arguments, and advance propositions. Collectively, they provide an unprecedented, panoramic,