19. Using Social Marketing to Promote Handwashing with Soap for a Healthier Vietnam

Diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis, helminthic infections, and other infectious diseases resulting from poor personal hygiene remain prevalent worldwide. This chapter reports on Vietnam’s Wash Your Hands with Soap campaign that encouraged young children and their mothers to wash their hands with soap. A number of challenges were identified, including the poor sanitary conditions in local schools, the misperception of the efficacy of water-only handwashing, the consideration of communication as the key tool of intervention, and health officials’ red-tape practices. Yet, there were opportunities such as governmental agencies’ coordination, international donors’ financial support, and Unilever’s substantial resources, and marketing skills. Informed by the exchange theory and social learning theory, free soap was distributed to local households and public areas in targeted regions by the Clean Hands Task Force. The Clean Hands Toolkits were also developed, and the Clean Hands Squad Game offered. The campaign raised the awareness of and engaged with not only the target audience but also the wider public in the promotion of handwashing with soap. Its scope of implementation was expanded from 18 provinces to 50, reaching 26 million people. The proportion of population who reported washing hands with soap rose from 14.6 to 66.5% in targeted areas.