Picture filling a cup with too much water. What happens? … The excess water runs over the edge and is wasted. The same thing happens when a person’s mind tries to process too much information: the excess also “spills over” and is lost. Some assessments show the mind can only deal with seven pieces of information each minute.
Avoiding this kind of waste is important to how Knowledge SUCCESS shares timely and relevant information for optimizing family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs and initiatives. We don’t want to overwhelm our audience or waste information—so we synthesize and deliver it in formats that can be well-received and used.
We heard from FP/RH professionals around the world, through our behavioral science research and co-creation workshops, that FP/RH information shared at the global level isn’t always relevant to their local setting. While some FP/RH professionals reported a lack of the types of information they need to do their jobs, others, particularly US-based professionals, reported there was too much information and not enough time to engage with it.
Across all regions, the main barriers to speeding up adoption of evidence and best practices in FP/RH programs were:
- Too much information and the daunting task of synthesising it
- Lack of time to engage with large amounts of information
- Poor presentation of information, making it difficult to mentally process and use