With public health emergencies on the rise in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region (ESAR), public officials and emergency responders have a responsibility to ensure communities have access to information that can keep them safe.
This case study explores how health experts and journalists combine forces to combat misinformation and brings the ESAR Media Taskforce to life. Co-led by Internews and the Collective Service under the UNICEF/IFRC-led RCCE Technical Working Group in Eastern and Southern Africa, the Media Taskforce is providing journalists with the tools they need to report on health crises as they emerge.
Measuring and fostering community trust in humanitarian action
Community trust is complex and requires an understanding of the factors that influence it, including social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects. Without a tool to measure trust, it is difficult for humanitarian actors to take action and develop strategies to rebuild and maintain trust. Community trust is earned, not given. Understanding community trust is essential to tailor interventions, prevent conflict, and ensure effectiveness of humanitarian action.
Background and objectives
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) Unit is establishing a Community Trust Index to help measure and foster community trust in humanitarian action.
The Index is based on a standardized questionnaire that assess community trust in competencies and values dimensions and has been recently piloted in the Red Cross and Red Crescent context in Argentina, Zambia, and the Philippines, with other countries preparing to pilot it.
The objectives of the Community Trust Index include:
Measuring and tracking trust levels in humanitarian organizations and services and exploring barriers and enablers of community trust, using scientifically tested quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Developing evidence-based policy and programmatic recommendations, plans, and actions to increase community trust and enhance impact of programs and operations.
Addressing the social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors of trust and advocating towards increased compliance, better governance, and accountability to communities.
In its future vision the Index will also assess barriers and enablers to community trust in humanitarian action more broadly using a mixed method approach, and will focus on specific thematic issues such as climate change, migration, or public health services.
Pilot phase and webinars
Last month, the CEA unit conducted two webinars to share the findings and lessons learned from the pilot phase of the Community Trust Index and convene a joint discussion to contribute for the future vision of the Community Trust Index as a tool to build trust and foster localization and effectiveness of humanitarian action.
GOARN hosted The Collective Service Monthly Global Call on Tuesday 31 October, bringing together approximately 30 RCCE partners from various agencies.
If you missed the call and would like to review the agenda or catch up on the topics and thematic presentations discussed, we have made the deck presentation available below.
This session primarily focused on the El Niño event, its impact on health emergencies, and included an introduction on the GOARN surge and deployment processes.
El Niño Situational Update: Preparedness and Response by Annemarie Ter Veen, WHO
El Niño Operational Update in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region by Rachel James, CS Regional Interagency Coordinator (UNICEF)
Introduction and Updates on GOARN Surge & Deployment Processes by Gianluca Loi, GOARN OST
If you have any questions regarding this presentation or would like to share operational support updates and participate in collaborative discussions on RCCE issues during our next Global Call, please contact Diane Le Corvec (diane.lecorvec@ifrc.org).
You are also welcome to register for next Global call | RCCE Collective Service update, which will take place on Tuesday 28 November here.
On Thursday, October 12th, UNICEF ESARO, with the support of partner agencies, led the first Design for Health Hackathon on Redesigning Cholera Response Challenge in Nairobi. The event brought together partners, designers and innovators, researchers and donors to rethink and redesign the cholera health service experience by closely examining behaviours across the journey to health. Participants competed to develop and pitch innovative ideas on reduce cholera-related mortality by improving the cholera service experience to a panel of technical experts and donors.
Cholera outbreakS in esar
In just the first half of 2023, 13 countries in the East and Southern Africa region have experienced cholera outbreaks. Many of these outbreaks have had high case fatality rates and prolonged responses related to inadequate investments in water and sanitation infrastructure, further compounded by the effects of climate change.
Findings from qualitative assessments in some countries including Malawi, demonstrated a lack of trust in health services resulting in delayed health seeking behaviour, which has been identified as a critical factor in the high case fatality rate. With shortages of oral cholera vaccine, without significant investments in infrastructure against a backdrop of climate change and the predicted El Nino event expected to escalate cholera outbreaks in both northern and southern East Africa, efforts to control the spread of cholera and reduce mortality need to urgently address barriers to home treatment and timely care seeking.
While longer term essential infrastructural investments and developments are underway across various countries in East and Southern Africa, the Hackathon aimed to address the urgent need to reduce mortality from cholera NOW.
Hackathon objectives and Design Challenge
The main objectives include:
Deepening the understanding of barriers and behaviours that affect successful cholera response
Developing innovative ideas for improving the experience of cholera response services and promoting timely health seeking behaviours during cholera outbreaks, and uptake of ORS
Fostering and strengthening partnerships between designers, donors, and community of practice.
Human-centred design (HCD) is used by health and immunization programmes to gather social and behavioural insights around client experiences of health services. By applying design thinking techniques, health programmes can identify and deepen understanding of the barriers and points of friction before, during and after services. Through empathising with client perspectives around the health experience, health and community workers and programmers can adapt the way those services are delivered to improve uptake.
The Hackathon aimed to promote offline solutions that build on the existing ecosystem of tools and cholera response approaches.
To support this, the participants were equipped with contextual information on the current approaches to cholera outbreak response and the journey to health from a wide range of perspectives:
community members,
health workers,
and community leaders.
Design Challenge
PURPOSE – How might we reduce mortality from Cholera NOW?
CHALLENGE – How can we improve the experience of cholera services to increase both UPTAKE OF ORS and TIMELY HEALTH SEEKING BEHAVIOUR in the first signs of cholera?
Competing teams and winning project
On October 12th, a range of participants, from Design thinkers and innovators to public health emergency joined forces to address the persistent barriers to quality cholera care in the region and innovate on cholera response. They consisted of user experience researchers and designers from the Nairobi Design Community Of Practice (Busara, Dalberg, YUX, Africa’s Talking, MAKL, Mideva Labs, Peri Bloom, Stamp Clean Tech). They were self-organized with some design companies choosing to compete as a firm, and some mixing with other studios.
An immersive experience was created including a cholera treatment unit which was set up by MSF to help designers to understand and empathise with people experiencing cholera symptoms. Technical experts from UNICEF, WHO, IFRC, MSF, OXFAM were assigned the role of “resource person” and embedded in the groups to answer any technical questions as the designers developed their intervention idea.
The participants, divided in five teams, presented the best intervention design for partners to take forward for implementation. Designs were presented to a panel of experts from across different agencies, including MSF’s Cholera Response Lead, UNICEF Health Specialist & Senior Behavioral Scientist.
The panel selected the ParaBoda design project as the winner of the Hackathon. The design project consists in:
Engaging local BodaBoda drivers to offer subsidized lifts to Oral Rehydration Points (ORP) and Cholera Treatment Units (CTU)”
Monitoring trips through GPS by the response partners to ensure tracking of ride and alert messages sent to ORPs/CTUs to ensure materials are ready on arrival
Tracking of rides can also support adequate sanitation protocols followed for drivers and bodas between rides
Equipping Boda drivers to share essential information about the Cholera Response & contact tracing
The details of the Hackathon challenge will be presented during the next RCCE Team Working Group meeting on Wednesday, November 1st and the winning team for Paraboda design project will also pitch their idea.
Note to the participants from the organisers:
“Thank you for joining us for our first ever Design for Health Hackathon last Thursday and making the event a huge success!
It was a pleasure to meet all of you and innovate on the regional cholera response. We will be reaching out to the winning team separately to support preparations of a pitch to the extended regional health emergencies partners and refine the ParaBoda innovation and implementation plan before taking this forward.
While we can only take one intervention forward, we want to extend sincere thanks to all who participated for the great ideas and energy you brought to the hackathon.
As we plan for future Design for Health Hackathons we look forward to continued collaboration and partnership!”
[Access the Design Challenge Summary Presentation here]
Cholera treatment unit immersive experience set up by MSF
Working groups, one of the five teams pitching and the winning team for the Paraboda design project
