P Process Model

"The P Process is a step-by-step roadmap that can guide you from a loosely defined concept about changing behavior to a strategic and participatory program that is grounded in theory and has measurable impact."

Updated in November 2013 by the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3), P Process is a tool originally developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) in 1982. P Process is a tool for planning strategic, evidence-based, health-centred social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) initiatives. Communication professionals around the world use P Process to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate communication strategies, materials, and programmes that aim to reduce HIV transmission, promote family planning/reproductive health, reduce maternal mortality, promote child survival, prevent infectious diseases and protect the environment.



The steps include:

1. Inquire - In this step, you will:
   • Begin to understand the extent of the problem
   • Identify your audiences
   • Uncover your intended audiences' barriers to behaviour change (economic, social, structural, cultural, educational, or something else entirely)
   • Identify facilitating factors to behaviour change, including potential messengers and media
   • Develop a succinct problem statement
2. Design your strategy - This involves:
   • Bringing together all the relevant players to participate in the strategy development process
   • Agreeing on the scope of the programme and discussing any limitations imposed by the budget, political situation, timeframe, etc.
   • Choosing a behaviour change model/theory and theoretical framework. (See box of commonly used theories on page 9.)
   • Deciding, given budget, time, and other constraints, on: primary and secondary audiences; structural and communication interventions that are needed to overcome identified barriers to change; communication objectives (what do you want each audience to do?); programme approaches and positioning (be able to explain how these choices will overcome the audience's barriers to behaviour change); communication channels (a combination of mass media and community-level or individual approaches works best); implementation plan and timeline, including roles and responsibilities; monitoring and evaluation plan; and dissemination plan to share project results
3. Create & Test - In this step, you will: develop the programme's communication products. These could include mass media and print materials, participatory processes, trainings, and more. In this step you will combine art and science - the creative and artistic vision needed to move audiences and inspire them to change and the analysis, theory, and strategic decisions of Steps 1 and 2. You will also test your ideas and designs with your intended audiences to ensure that messages are clear and actionable.
4. Mobilise & Monitor - In this step, you will: Implement your programme and monitor its progress. You and your partners will distribute your products and conduct activities as described by the strategic plan developed in Step 2. Designated players will monitor activities to make sure distribution and roll-out proceed as planned and potential problems are identified and addressed as quickly as possible.
5. Evaluate & Evolve - This involves: measuring outcomes and assessing impact through surveys and other evaluation techniques; disseminating results (even if not entirely positive) with donors, partners, key stakeholders and decision-makers, media, and other interested individuals and organisations; and indicate in your final report future opportunities, how to apply lessons learned, where follow-up is needed, and how results could be scaled up.

A cross-cutting concept throughout this process is that of learning through capacity strengthening at the individual, organisational, and system levels.