Agency for All

The Situation
Agency is key to social and behavior change. Evidence shows that empowerment-focused approaches lead to lasting improvements in health outcomes. Yet, many interventions overlook individual and collective empowerment—the very force that drives change.

What We’re Doing
Agency for All collaborated with local experts to explore how individual and collective agency both influence and are influenced by key drivers of health behavior across different contexts.

Our Approach
Conceptualizing Agency
Agency is the awareness of choices, the ability to set goals, and the power to take action. Internal and external factors—such as resilience, social support, and social norms—shape this process, which varies by context. However, agency in health and development is often defined by high-income nations and broadly applied to low- and middle-income countries. Agency for All addressed these gaps by exploring diverse community perspectives, evaluating existing measures, and developing cross-nationally validated tools rooted in local understandings.

Fostering Agency
Agency for All conducted implementation research to understand how social and behavior change (SBC) interventions foster agency to improve health. The research explored what works—and what doesn’t—in supporting agency across global health sectors.

Centering Agency
Vast resources are invested in SBC initiatives worldwide. Through research and assessments, Agency for All examined past SBC efforts, documented key learnings, and identified best practices—clarifying the role of agency in their success.

Strengthening Agency
Agency for All embraced agency within its own work by fostering equitable partnerships. Through iterative learning, we developed, implemented, and assessed strategies to strengthen collaborations, amplify local voices, and advance the localization agenda in global health and development.

Our Impact and What We’re Learning
We envision a world where women, men, children, families and communities have the agency to make healthy choices.