By Ashley Camp
A new low-cost method is being used to help developing countries worldwide solve key health problems according to a recent advocacy piece co-authored by a BYU professor.
Kirk Dearden, associate professor of health science and co-author of ?The Power of Positive Deviance,? published by the British Medical Journal listed methods needed to establish good health within struggling communities. This approach is known as positive deviance.
In the article, Dearden and his associates explain positive deviants as individuals who are healthy despite poor circumstances. These healthy, but uncommon practices can benefit others.
A few of the uncommon practices range from parents adding new ingredients to their children?s diet or clipping fingernails to avoid transmission of disease, Dearden said.
?The first step in conducting positive deviance is to see if the approach is appropriate,? Dearden said. ?If there is not a critical mass?for example, of malnourished children?it may be difficult to have a successful program, since positive deviance is a resource and labor intensive intervention.?
Once children are identified, they form relationships with leaders, such as trained volunteers and government staff to help pass along the positive behavior.
The leaders then conduct surveys to determine how deviants are able to maintain good health while their neighbors in the same circumstance are not able to be healthy, Dearden said.
?Poor people are so fixated on their problems, in a sense it is de-motivating. We try and focus on what is going right for the community,? said David R. Marsh, senior child survival advisor for Save the Children Federation (USA) and another author of ?The Power of Positive Deviance.?
In Vietnam, positive deviance has helped more than 2.5 million individuals. Local community members have identified beneficial behaviors including, collecting shrimp, crabs and greens from local rice paddies to add to children?s soup.
Once community members identify positive behaviors, the community makes sure everyone can adopt the behaviors.
?The behaviors need to be acceptable, affordable and accessible to all member of the community if you are going to get the community to adapt them,? Marsh said.
Program staff and volunteers then start ?hearth? sessions where community members who experience negative health outcomes learn new information and practices from the healthy individuals.
In the example of malnutrition, parents of undernourished children are asked to bring a handful of positive deviant foods to every hearth session. While at the hearth session, they learn new meals to cook, and their child gets an extra meal.
Once the case is developed, the staff then evaluates the behavior and expands the programming. The staff weighs infants and children before and after the hearth session to see the improvements in fighting malnutrition.
?Generally, the improvements in children?s weights are substantial. When parents see that much change, they want to continue practicing the new positive deviant behaviors,? Dearden said.
Positive deviance is different from other development approaches.
?In contrast , most international health initiatives are prescriptive, top down or donor driven and difficult to sustain without ongoing external resources,? the article states.
The article emphasizes that even in the poorest circumstances, individuals can obtain better health through practices they have identified as beneficial.
?The process is one of self discovery,? Dearden said. ?The community members quickly recognize that they identified the solutions to problems they face. Since community members themselves were able to identify the answers, they are more likely to practice the solutions.?