Change Starts at Home — Radio & Community Listening Groups Against Intimate Partner Violence, Nepal

Change Starts at Home combined a serial radio drama with weekly, facilitator-led community listening and discussion groups (LDGs), run by Equal Access International across 36 communities in Nepal's Chitwan, Nawalparasi and Kapilvastu districts. The 40-week intervention targeted married couples directly, alongside broader radio audiences, aiming to shift the household and community norms that sustain intimate partner violence (IPV).
The programme was evaluated through a cluster-randomised controlled trial designed with Emory University and the University of Minnesota, funded by the UK's former Department for International Development under its 'What Works to Prevent Violence' programme. At baseline, roughly a quarter of women surveyed in the Terai intervention districts reported past-year IPV. Published analyses (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2021; Journal of Family Violence, 2025) report statistically significant improvements at midline and/or endline in secondary outcomes — including in-law violence, couples' financial decision-making, communication and relationship quality — and qualitative interviews describe reduced husband's alcohol use and improved conflict resolution among participating couples.
This review could not independently verify a single quantified topline effect size for the trial's primary physical/sexual IPV outcome from openly accessible sources, since the peer-reviewed results sit behind journal paywalls. The programme is included on the strength of its rigorous cluster-RCT design, multiple published follow-on analyses through 2025, and consistently positive secondary-outcome findings, but its evidence score reflects that the core violence-reduction result was not independently confirmed here.

Read the full analysis: https://www.equalaccess.org/resources/intimate-partner-violence-ipv-in-nepal-change-starts-at-home-study/