WHO and UNICEF: Global co-design consultation for Hand Hygiene in Community Settings

Global co-design consultation to identify system level barriers and enablers to implementing Hand Hygiene in community settings

  • Investigators

      • Joanna Mills Esteves, Technical Officer for WASH
      • Kidist Bartolomeos, Unit Head, Science Division
      • Elisabetta Minelli, Implementation Evaluation Officer, Science Division
        • World Health Organisation (WHO)

  • Co-investigators

      • Hatoun Ibrahim
        • Monash University
      • Adjunct Associate Professor Olga Kokshagina
        • University of Sydney

  • Partner organisation

    • World Health Organisation, UNICEF

  • Funded by

    • World Health Organisation

  • Undertaken within

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF, with support from WaterAid, are developing new global guidelines on hand hygiene in community settings, set for release in October 2024. This effort is part of the broader Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) program, which focuses on improving access to safe water, promoting sanitation and hygiene practices, and ensuring communities have the infrastructure and resources for these essential services.

To inform these guidelines, we partnered with WHO and UNICEF to train 50 facilitators across 10 Champion Countries: Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia, Iraq, Ghana, Mali, Nepal, the Philippines, Serbia, and Zambia. The design tools we developed were used to conduct National Hand Hygiene Systems Workshops in each country, bringing together 20-50 participants per country to identify system-level barriers and enablers to hand hygiene in community settings. Around 400 people in total participated across the 10 countries to identify system level barriers to implementation of the new guidelines.

Following the national workshops, a one-day global workshop took place in Kathmandu, Nepal, where over 50 participants, including national and international officials, reviewed and analysed the findings. The data and insights gathered from these workshops contributed to the development of a global systems strengthening framework, designed to accompany the new WHO and UNICEF guideline, Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Community Settings.