In this blog, Santiago Ripoll, Tabitha Hrynick, Megan Schmidt-Sane and Ashley Ouvrier summarise the key messages of a recent briefing on how local governments in multicultural urban neighbourhoods can support vaccine equity in pandemics.
Ebola provokes fear in communities due to the severity of the symptoms, misunderstanding of the causes, the high number of deaths and control measures that are often perceived as intrusive and interfering with local social, cultural and religious practices.
Misinformation, mistrust of outsiders and conspiracy theories have spread quickly across North Kivu and Ituri. Communities have expressed a rational distrust born of decades of violence and displacement, along with unfamiliarity with the disease and with response activities.
At the time of the 2014–2015 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak, Liberia was still recovering from years of civil war and unrest. The country’s infrastructure was very poor, especially in rural regions, where people could not easily travel because of the lack of adequate roads. Liberia’s health system was also weakened by the civil war, leaving health facilities struggling to respond to the EVD outbreak effectively.
There was a lack of basic drugs and medical supplies, as well as the disenchantment of low-paid health workers. In fact, health workers had planned a strike right when the Ebola virus hit. Another challenge was that health workers often lived very long distances away from the health facilities.
Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) is an essential part of any disease outbreak response. Risk communication in the context of an Ebola outbreak refers to real time exchange of information, opinion and advice between frontline responders and people who are faced with the threat of Ebola to their survival, health, economic or social wellbeing. Community engagement refers to mutual partnership between Ebola response teams and individuals or communities in affected areas, whereby community stakeholders have ownership in controlling the spread of the outbreak.
This document was developed jointly by the Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) incident management team for the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in September 2018 by World Health Organization, UNICEF and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, with inputs from GOARN Research (Social Science), US Centres for Disease Control,
Social Anthropologist Julienne Anoko visits communities to encourage safe and dignified burial. Infection of the Ebola virus can occur from touching the bodies of those who have died from Ebola virus disease (EVD).
This document was developed by the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme as a resource for the response to the outbreak in DR Congo in May 2018. It is intended to be used to guide risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) work which is central to stopping the outbreak and preventing its further amplification.
The 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa highlighted both the successes and limitations of social
science contributions to emergency response operations. An important limitation was the rapid and
effective communication of study findings. A systematic review was carried out to explore how rapid
qualitative methods have been used during global heath emergencies to understand which methods are
commonly used, how they are applied, and the difficulties faced by social science researchers in the field.
We also asses their value and benefit for health emergencies.
The authors present current evidence on how climate change impacts on social and environmental determinants of health and the link between these determinants and the vulnerability of local communities. They outline proven community-based interventions that local populations in developing countries can scale-up and take ownership of in order to strengthen their resilience to climate-sensitive diseases and conditions.
Communication for Change (C-Change) set out to develop support tools that would foster interactive communication among low-literacy adults and prompt engagement on HIV prevention issues, including encouraging individual and group-oriented problem solving. The Community Conversation Toolkit (CCT) was developed using participatory approaches with lower literacy audiences and was extensively pre-tested in southern and eastern Africa. The CCT is a social and behavior change communication (SBCC) resource that comprises a set of interactive communication components including role play cards, throw cubes, playing cards, dialogue buttons, finger puppets, and guides for facilitation and community mobilization. The CCT has been adapted for use in seven countries and is available in ten languages.This evaluation report looked at whether this toolkit elicited changes in behaviour and practices by participants around HIV prevention, and whether the processes of reflection and problem solving led to community-level action for HIV-prevention-related change.
This plan aims to reinforce community resilience to food insecurity by strengthening the following areas: access to and availability of food; household food security and nutrition and livelihoods; community-based disaster risk reduction; access to safe water and hygiene, and health awareness.
The plan will unite and support the efforts of partners and contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2, to end hunger and achieve food security, as well as priority actions of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Prior to the UNHCR community-based PMTCT protocol, pregnant refugee women living with HIV were unable to access essential PMTCT services. Refugee women are now able to have access to a
comprehensive PMTCT programme.
Reports into the Ebola outbreak overemphasise the role of the World Health Organisation while neglecting the importance of local community responses.