This year’s Global Handwashing Day theme  “Be a Handwashing Hero”  celebrates the power of individual action. From young children to senior business and government leaders, everyone has a role to play in championing clean hands for all.

At RGHI, we believe that real heroes stand on a foundation of evidence. Hygiene is the first and last line of defence against disease, yet it remains one of global health’s most underfunded priorities. Every year, diarrhoeal disease kills over a million people, almost half of them children under five. Deaths that are largely preventable through simple hygiene practices. Still, 2.3 billion people lack access to basic handwashing facilities with soap and water at home.

Despite hygiene’s measurable impact on health outcomes, the field has long suffered from chronic underinvestment. Because hygiene challenges often affect low- and middle-income countries, they attract less global attention. And because hygiene spans so many disciplines, from public health to behavioural science and environmental systems , it frequently falls between funding silos.

The result is a fragmented approach that leaves fundamental questions unanswered: What really works? Why do some interventions last while others fade? How do we measure change effectively across different contexts? Without strong evidence, policy and investment decisions rest on assumption rather than data.

RGHI exists to change that. Through funding high-quality, interdisciplinary research and nurturing new hygiene leaders, we are generating the evidence that turns good intentions into lasting impact. Our research helps explain why people wash their hands, or don’t, and how culture, gender, climate, and infrastructure interact to shape behaviour. These insights are helping design policies that move beyond awareness campaigns to achieve systemic, sustainable change.

Everyone can be a handwashing hero — but lasting progress depends on evidence. Research gives us the insights that turn good intentions into real impact.

This Global Handwashing Day, RGHI celebrates the everyday heroes of clean hands and calls for renewed commitment to the science that sustains their impact.

Be a handwashing hero. Support the evidence that makes change possible.