About
The Behavioural and Cultural Insights (BCI) Hub provides a knowledge-sharing platform for evidence and good practice related to the barriers and drivers of healthy practices.
What are behavioural and cultural insights?
The term behavioural and cultural insights refers to understanding the contextual and individual factors that affect healthy behaviours and practices. These insights draw on research from the social sciences and health humanities to enable engagement with the people targeted and affected by policy.
Improving the health and well-being of all cannot be achieved without an understanding of the barriers and drivers that people experience in adopting healthy practices. Systematically exploring these barriers and drivers and creating environments based on these insights is often not integrated into health policy planning.
Behavioural and cultural insights enable us to engage with communities and individuals rather than considering them solely as the recipients of health interventions.
What is the purpose of the BCI-Hub?
The BCI-Hub is designed to share and showcase evidence and good practice. The site brings together content from past, present and future projects related to behavioural and cultural Insights, created by both WHO and external partners.
The Knowledge Hub was developed and is maintained by the University of Exeter's WHO Collaborating Centre for Culture and Health in partnership with the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit at WHO/Europe.
Who are we?
In April 2020, WHO/Europe established the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit as a flagship initiative to coordinate and lead efforts to provide technical guidance and expertise to countries on best practices for incorporating this approach into health policy and planning.
Vision
The BCI unit's vision is for a European Region in which all individuals and communities are motivated to adopt healthy practices, in their daily lives and in the way they use health services.
Mission
The BCI unit works with Member States to explore the perspectives and experiences of individuals and communities, and to help Member States address the barriers and drivers of health and well-being. This makes healthy practices possible, acceptable, convenient and attractive.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated the Centre for Environments and Cultures of Health at the University of Exeter as the WHO Collaborating Centre for Behavioural and Cultural Insights. The Centre’s research activities across the medical humanities and social sciences provide interdisciplinary research support and technical guidance on behavioural and cultural Insights into health.
The Centre works with WHO to produce guidance for policymakers and to run events designed to generate new approaches to public health, informed by behavioural and cultural insights. It explores how the humanities and social sciences can be used to develop and evaluate innovative public health initiatives.
Co-directed by Professor Mark Jackson and Dr Felicity Thomas, the Centre is supported by the Wellcome Trust and the University of Exeter.
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WHO is the public health body of the United Nations. WHO/Europe, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, is one of WHO's 6 regional offices around the world.
It serves the WHO European Region, which comprises 53 countries, covering a geographical region from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
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