In February 2023, USAID Advancing Nutrition and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Amalima Loko Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in Zimbabwe convened a workshop to identify opportunities for strengthening peer/care group implementation for nutrition behavior change.

Nearly ubiquitous in USAID-funded health and nutrition programs, peer groups are a behavior change approach that encourages community members to share information and insights with each other. Because of their wide implementation and high potential for supporting improved nutrition and health behaviors, it is important to identify opportunities to strengthen their implementation.

The workshop is part of an effort by USAID Advancing Nutrition and Amalima Loko to conduct implementation research using a human-centered design (HCD) approach. HCD uses people as the focal point of design development so that resulting products and solutions meet the real needs of that audience. Workshop participants included Zimbabwe-based researchers, 12 members of the Amalima Loko RFSA, a Zimbabwean HCD expert, and staff from USAID Advancing Nutrition. In teams of three, participants developed potential solutions to six “how might we…” questions grounded in care group participant challenges and preferences. Together, the teams proposed and prioritized 18 potential solutions to consider for prototyping. Over the next four months, USAID Advancing Nutrition and Amalima Loko will synthesize the solutions into three to five prototypes and test them with care groups to determine which work best.