Changing Behaviour in an Epidemic

This book is the product of activities carried out by the author on HIV prevention programmes at the Association for Reproductive and Family Health, ARFH, Ibadan between 1998 and 2010 as the Director of the Evaluation and Operations Research Unit. Part I presents the 4-stage framework of behaviour change within which Professor Adeokun executed all the projects for which he was Principal Investigator during his 12 years at ARFH. The characteristics of a largely traditional and unsophisticated population make some of the assumptions of classic Western models and frameworks not fully applicable to the Nigerian setting.

In Part II he has shown how events on five major sub-projects for which the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) and the World AIDS Foundation, Paris, France provided substantial and sustained support allowed him and his project team to show the proof of concept of his framework and validate and develop it into a locally relevant tool of behaviour change.

The Nigerian Ebola virus disease outbreak raises the intellectual question whether the framework could be encompassed in the application of the 4-Stage Framework.  The conclusion is reached that the Framework has relevance to changed behaviour in a fast-moving health challenge and could be extended to other health situation requiring a long-lasting change in behaviour.  This 4-stage framework is worthy of consideration in the Public Health and Health Education curriculum of our Colleges of Medicine.