Positive Deviance
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Positive Deviance is an approach to Behavioural Change Communication (BCC) based on the idea that even though poverty is often the root-cause of ill health, in any community there will usually be some families that manage to stay healthy, or raise healthy kids, despite their poverty. The approach consists of helping the community identify the families or individuals that are "positive deviants" (poor but still healthy), and finding out what they do differently from the other families. This could include washing their hands more often, cooking the food differently, consuming crops that were considered taboo by the rest of the village etc. The idea is then for the community at large to adopt these practices, to enhance their own health. By facilitating the discovery by the village members themselves about practices that are already present in the community, one is assured of promoting practices that are locally practical and appropriate, and it also helps in convincing the community of the feasibility of adopting said practices.
The method was introduced by Jerry Sternin during his work with child nutrition in Vietnam, who has continued to promote the concept together with his wife Monique. His work was based on that of Marian Zeltlin at Tufts University1.
