The Drum Beat 788 - Communication at the Intersection of Polio and COVID-19: Themes from an Online Consultation

• 1.Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative Support to the COVID-19 Response
  Pakistan's Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) team is offering technical support for the coordination of the risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) working group for the COVID-19 response. The PEI anthropologist is designing and fielding tools through phone interviews with key informants to collect information on awareness, key concerns, rumours and misconceptions, major influencers and sources of information, and care-seeking behaviours. This informs national RCCE strategy and communication materials, such as the "Sehat Tahaffuz" (Protection of Health) Helpline (1166), which provides polio and other health information and was co-opted by the government to support the COVID-19 response.
  
   
• 2.Tips for Engaging Communities during COVID-19 in Low-Resource Settings, Remotely and In-Person
  This brief provides key considerations for engaging communities on COVID-19 where there are movement restrictions and physical distancing measures in place, particularly in low-resource settings. Designed for humanitarian and implementing actors working on health promotion and RCCE for COVID-19, the document is an initiative of the GOARN RCCE Coordination Working Group, co-led by UNICEF, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). [Apr 2020]
  
   
• 3.Community Engagement from a Distance - Guide
  This guide is designed to assist development and humanitarian agencies to think through how RCCE activities related to COVID-19 can be carried out without face-to-face interaction with communities. It is intended for communities in Bangladesh and was produced by BBC Media Action on behalf of Shongjog multi-stakeholder platform, the national platform for Communication with Communities (CwC) in Bangladesh. [Mar 2020]
  
   
• See also:
  Selections on The CI site focused on community engagement in the COVID-19 pandemic
  

• 4.Immunization: Vital Progress, Unfinished Agenda
  by Peter Piot, Heidi J. Larson, Katherine L. O'Brien, John N'kengasong, Edmond Ng, Samba Sow, and Beate Kampmann
  This paper makes the case that immunisation is "one of the best investments in health and should remain a priority for research, industry, public health and society." The authors discuss: the current status of vaccine coverage, as well as unmet needs, hurdles to overcome to ensure sustainable immunisation programmes (starting with the discovery of a new vaccine), the issue of vaccine reluctance and refusal, and opportunities and needed actions to ensure the full potential of immunisation for human health and society. [Nov 2019]
  
   
• 5.Advocacy for Stronger Immunization Programs
  by Ana F. Carvalho, MBA, MPH
  In 2001, GAVI in partnership with PATH published a report entitled "Advocacy for Immunization: How to Generate and Maintain Support for Vaccination Programs". In 2010, UNICEF published "Advocacy Toolkit - A Guide to Influencing Decisions that Improve Children's Lives". This chapter in a book published by the Sabin Vaccine Institute takes the main lessons from these documents and attempts to simplify the advocacy process so that individuals are empowered to advocate for immunisation. [Nov 2018]
  
   
• 6.19th Meeting of the European Technical Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (ETAGE)
  In part, the October 2019 ETAGE meeting reviewed and endorsed the proposed Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) Strategic Framework, which outlines a global vision and strategy for the next decade. Core components of the regional strategy will include an advocacy framework entailing political engagement, a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework, and an investment case demonstrating the full public health value of immunisation to national health systems. Of note was an outline, during the gathering, of a new area of work being undertaken by the Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization programme (VPI) of the WHO Regional Office in developing guidelines on effective communication of immunisation data. [Jan 2020]
  
   
• See also:
  Our World United to End Polio
  

• See:
• * The Drum Beat 786 - Learning from Polio for COVID-19 Action
  

• Visit:
• * The CI's Polio theme site - where communication and media are central to the eradication of polio
  
• * The COVID-19 Communication and Community Engagement HUB - the Network for Shared Knowledge and Active Dialogue in Support of Effective COVID-19 Action
  

• Reach out to us:
• * Subscribe [vaccines@comminit.com] to the DB Click: Immunisation, Vaccines, and Polio, which complements The Drum Beat through a specific focus on immunisation, vaccine, and polio.
  
• * Participate in The CI Networks' dialogue, exploring: what are the three strategic and/or programming priorities for an effective response to COVID-19?
  

• 7.First Draft Case Study: Understanding the Impact of Polio Vaccine Disinformation in Pakistan
  by Sarika Bhattacharjee and Carlotta Dotto
  On April 22 2019, several staged videos went viral on Twitter and Facebook falsely claiming that children had become gravely ill after their polio vaccinations in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwest Pakistan. This case study uncovers how the videos spread on social media, the reasons behind the history of vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan, and how the footage became an engine for vaccine misinformation and mistrust, derailing efforts to immunise millions of children. It concludes with recommendations for social media platforms, health authorities, and the news media who are confronted with an outbreak of misinformation. [Feb 2020]
  
   
• 8.The Online Competition between Pro- and Anti-Vaccination Views
  by Neil F. Johnson, Nicolas Velásquez, Nicholas Johnson Restrepo, Rhys Leahy, Nicholas Gabriel, Sara El Oud, Minzhang Zheng, Pedro Manrique, Stefan Wuchty, and Yonatan Lupu
  There is concern that opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, could amplify outbreaks. Online narratives - including the health dis- and misinformation that can foment vaccine hesitancy or refusal - tend to be strengthened and amplified in in-built community spaces that are a specific feature of social media platforms such as Facebook. This study provides a system-level analysis of the multi-sided ecology of nearly 100 million individuals expressing vaccine views on Facebook. The researchers propose strategies to fight online disinformation, including influencing the heterogeneity of individual communities to delay onset and decrease their growth and manipulating the links between communities in order to prevent the spread of negative views. [May 2020]
  
   
• 9.Countering Misinformation Via WhatsApp: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Zimbabwe
  by Jeremy Bowles, Horacio Larreguy, and Shelley Liu
  Researchers from the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University examined the effectiveness of short WhatsApp messages whose purpose was to address misinformation and mistrust in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These messages were jointly crafted by Internews, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating in Zimbabwe, and Kubatana, described here as a trusted online media civil society organisation (CSO). The fact that the researchers found relatively uniformly estimated effects across subgroups - e.g., across the urban-rural and gender divide - highlights, in their eyes, the potential of CSOs in sub-Saharan Africa to use WhatsApp to fight misinformation, especially during health crises. [May 2020]
  
   
• See also:
  Key Considerations: Online Information, Mis- and Disinformation in the Context of COVID-19
  

• 10.Community-Based Health Care, Including Outreach and Campaigns, in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
  In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the capacity of trusted community members to deliver people-centred health care is critical. This is the position of WHO, UNICEF, and IFRC, who have come together to present this guidance document. With regard to health information systems, WHO, UNICEF, and IFRC stress that community data are needed to monitor and maintain essential health services and to inform public health actions that can slow and stop COVID-19 transmission. If a mobile network is available, data could be called in to supervisors or facilities, or photos could be submitted to capture monthly reports. In situations in which technology cannot be leveraged, the workforce should be involved in creating a process for aggregating data at the community level and identifying appropriate pathways to ensure that data reach the health facility. [May 2020]
  
   
• 11.COVID-19 Response - Digital Technology Part 1
  As part of a series of weekly calls, CORE Group convened a panel of presenters from a variety of organisations to discuss current digital technologies being used in the COVID-19 response. One presentation describes how community-based e-surveillance - used as part of the CORE Group Polio & Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) Project, working in hard-to-reach nomadic and cross-border communities around Kenya, is being adapted to the COVID-19 response. Widely used to track diseases such as polio and measles, community-based e-surveillance makes use of community health volunteers who report to a local health facility. The presentation describes the surveillance workflow - how data are collected by mobile phone; how the data are collated and processed; what tools, equipment, and platforms are used; and the kind of information that becomes available for use by health officials. [Mar 2020]
  
   
• 12.An Assessment of Parents' Childhood Immunization Beliefs, Intentions, and Behaviors Using a Smartphone Panel
  by John Boyle, Lew Berman, Glen J. Nowak, Ronaldo Iachan, Deirdre Middleton, and Yangyang Deng
  In the United States and elsewhere, the pervasive reach and use of smartphones opens a potential pathway to collect valid and reliable data in a rapid, cost-efficient way. The present study used this data collection strategy to assess: (i) parental immunisation-related beliefs, intentions, and behaviours; (ii) the relationship between beliefs and intentions regarding child immunisation and actual behaviours (i.e., refusals or delays in recommended vaccinations); and (iii) whether beliefs, intentions, and/or behaviours varied across various demographic subgroups. [Feb 2020]
  
   
• See also:
  Research in Global Health Emergencies: Ethical Issues
  

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