Behavioural and cultural insights and COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic served as a stark reminder that understanding people’s perceptions, social and physical circumstances, and psychological states is critical for appropriate and effective health measures. Faced with this global health crisis, governments across the WHO European Region invested in efforts to understand population behaviours and their drivers and barriers, and used this evidence to guide action. This demonstrated commitment, and identified the need for further investment and capacity-building to fully leverage the value of these approaches.
To support these efforts in countries, WHO/Europe launched a behavioural insights tool for countries to monitor population perceptions, behaviours and well-being during the pandemic. To date, the tool has been used across 30 countries in the Region. WHO has provided the majority of these countries with extensive technical support for data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting.
Overall, countries use the data to:
- identify or document critical issues to address
- provide evidence to inform decisions on public health and social measures
- demonstrate transparency
- convene stakeholders
- inform cross-sector strategies.
