The Breakthrough Gallery

The Breakthrough Gallery highlights some of the incredible achievements the project has made in social and behavior change. To qualify as a breakthrough, an activity must show that it offers a novel perspective, evidence of effectiveness, and scalability. These breakthroughs also adhere to the USAID definition of innovations: “The pursuit of novel approaches that lead to substantial improvements in addressing development challenges” (USAID, 2023).

Want to learn more about the process of identifying breakthroughs?

Read on for more details about how the project defines and identifies breakthroughs.

A woman installing a mosquito net in her home in Kenya

USAID

Cost Comparison Activity

What is a breakthrough?

Breakthroughs are particularly meaningful project achievements. While the project has many meaningful achievements worthy of celebration, breakthroughs are the relatively rare gems that pass a higher threshold. Breakthrough ACTION used a critical lens to assess which activities offered innovations that measurably accelerated health outcomes. Where did the project break new ground? Where had research and design thinking been applied to identify new successful solutions? The diagram below presents the three phases used to designate breakthroughs.

Phase 1: Actionable Insights, Phase 2: Solutions, Phase 3: Innovations, Breakthroughs stem from actionable Insights, novel solutions that test well, are scalable, and produce evidence of effectiveness when implemented.

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This website is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Breakthrough awards are supported by USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, under Cooperative Agreements: #AID-OAA-A-17-00017 and #AID-OAA-A-17-00018. Breakthrough ACTION is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs. Breakthrough RESEARCH is based at Population Council. The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of Breakthrough ACTION and Breakthrough RESEARCH. The information provided on this website is not official U.S. Government information and does not necessarily represent the views or positions of USAID, the United States Government, Johns Hopkins University, or Population Council.