Behaviour Change in Healthcare Settings
Behaviour Change in Healthcare Settings
Registration is managed through UCT's Continuing Education Unit.
Start exploring our course
Registration is managed through UCT's Continuing Education Unit.
Upcoming dates:
- 16 September 2026 (Hybrid)
Behaviour Change in Healthcare Settings -
A one-day course equipping healthcare professionals, policymakers, and practitioners with the tools to understand health behaviour, diagnose barriers, and design interventions that work in real-world clinical and community contexts.
Earn 6 CPD points upon completion.
This course introduces applied behavioural science in the context of healthcare systems. It focuses on why patients, healthworkers, and communities do not always act on health knowledge, and how to design solutions that are practical, ethical, and effective. Grounded in South Africa’s health system realities, the course provides tools to improve adherence, attendance, prevention behaviours, and health service delivery.
- ■ Course format options: Online and in-person
- ■ For: Healthcare professionals, NGOs, public health practitioners, policymakers, behavioural scientists
- ■ You'll learn: Practical tools for real-world health system challenges
'Knowledge by itself rarely changes behaviour – and in healthcare settings the stakes of that gap are profound.'
What you'll learn
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Understanding health behaviour
Why information alone is not enough, and how behaviour is shaped by context, systems, and lived experience.
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Diagnosing behavioural barriers
Use COM-B and a locally adapted model for empathy and context to identify what is really driving behaviour.
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Designing effective interventions
Apply the Behaviour Change Wheel and EAST to create practical, low-cost solutions.
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Behaviour change in health systems
Improve adherence, clinic attendance, prevention behaviours, and healthworker practices.
Who is it for?
If your work involves health behaviour – whether as a practitioner, policymaker, or programme designer – this course is for you. No prior behavioural science training required.
Behavioural insights can help you address challenges such as improving patient adherence, reducing missed appointments, increasing vaccination uptake, strengthening trust and communication, and designing more effective health services and programmes. The tools you learn can be applied across clinical, community, and policy contexts.
By the end of this course you'll be able to ...
- ■ Understand why health behaviours break down in real-world settings
- ■ Identify key behavioural drivers across patient, provider, and system levels
- ■ Design targeted, evidence-informed interventions.
- ■ Apply behavioural science to real healthcare challenges.
- ■ Develop a practical Behaviour Change Action Plan for your setting.
Certificate of successful completion
Participants will receive a 'Certificate of Completion' from the University of Cape Town's Continuing Education Unit (CEU) upon full participation, along with 6 CPD points and a digital badge for Fundamentals of Behaviour Change in Healthcare Settings.
This can be shared on LinkedIn and other professional platforms to showcase applied behavioural science capability in healthcare.
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