In late 2020, the Passages Project called for a challenge dialogue to grapple with a perceived lack of community consensus regarding what is needed to ensure that social norms (SN) are adequately addressed in social and behavior change (SBC) programming and research. Over 100 SBC and SN implementers, researchers, and donors from around the world came together in a series of online discussions to deliberate on how best to apply SN approaches and measurement to SBC programming to facilitate and achieve sustained behavior change. Discussions resulted in a collaboratively-written
Challenge Paper, which sought to capture the state of progress and points of agreement. Participants agreed that attentiveness to how SNs influence program implementation and outcomes can transform SBC work and acknowledged a growing body of evidence that explicitly links SN programming to successful SBC efforts. Discussions also identified how diverse cultural contexts and disciplinary backgrounds contribute to different perspectives on SN and how best to address them in SBC programming. Coming up short of consensus in many areas, we believe continued dialogue on this topic is needed. We seek to engage a broader audience of SBCC conference attendees in this debate to raise awareness of unanswered questions about how SN should be addressed in SBC and to prompt breakthroughs in thinking to lead to concrete next steps for bringing SN awareness into SBC work. SN experts will present four unresolved challenges and invite audience members to join them in breakout groups to develop recommendations and calls to action.