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Hygiene and Health-focussed promotion refers to promotional activities which take the hygiene and the health of the user as the main focus in promotion activities, as contrasted to, for example, increased status from the use of a branded product, multiple use promotion, or appealing to emotions such as disgust, as in the case of [[Community-Led Total Sanitation]]. Hygiene and Health-focused promotion is in many places the conventional approach to promote better sanitation and water services and to stimulate demand for improved services.

Hygiene is behaviour which serves to prevent illness. Hygienic behaviour also helps to keep people and their environments clean, ordered and attractive. Three practices have been shown to be particularly effective: handwashing with soap, the removal of sanitation products from the household environment, and the home treatment of drinking water. Each of these interventions has been shown to reduce the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases by about 35% <ref> [http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/hp.htm WELL factsheet - Hygiene promotion]</ref> An excellent overview of Hygiene promotion is available at [http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/hp.htm WELL factsheet - Hygiene promotion at the WELL website], which provides common falacies, key principles and many references.

Hygiene promotion is most effective in combination with improved, affordable, and accepted water and sanitation interventions <ref>[http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/Publications/Briefing%20Notes/BN14%20van%20Wijk.pdf The value of hygiene promotion, WELL background study]</ref>. One reason for this is that although hygiene promotion can also improve health in the absence of improved facilities, it is often the improvements in sanitation and water facilites, such as a pit latrine instead of open defecation, or a tippy tap for hand washing, which enable the new hygienic behaviour.

For this reason, priority should be given to making hygiene promotion a separate component of a complete water and sanitation programme. This can also be reversed: improvements in The Hygiene Improvement Framework <ref>[http://www.ehproject.org/PDF/Joint_Publications/JP008-HIF.pdf The Hygiene Improvement Framework - a comprehensive approach for preventing childhood diarrhea. Produced by EHP, USAID, Worldbank/WSP, WSSCC]</ref>, for example, uses a combined approach consisting of Access to Hardware (water supply systems, improved sanitation facilities, etc.), an Enabling Environment (Policy improvements, community organization, financing, etc), and Hygiene Promotion (Communication, Social mobilization, community participation, etc.).

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