PUBH6006 Community Engagement and Mobilisation Strategy Assignment Sample

Community Health And Disease Prevention

Introduction to Community Health And Disease Prevention

During a health epidemic like Ebola, continued involvement and contact with community organizations involved at the community level helps create confidence and trust in response efforts and encourages community participation and response action (Carlisle et al., 2018). There have been several concerns and rumors during any health outbreak that resulted in unsafe acts arising by caring for family members at homes and being infected with the disease. Public involvement will increasingly be key to identifying new cases of Ebola and to monitoring connections with people who are infected with Ebola virus disease or have died of the disease (Strong & Schwartz, 2019). The approach used in this is bottom-up. In this strategy, the members of the Community will require training in other aspects of the response so that they too can participate safely and efficiently to stop this deadly disease transmission. Guidance and resources on civic participation and social mobilization from the WHO which are scientifically sound and culturally applicable, practical, and feasible for societies to act on (World Health Organization, 2016). Throughout this article, the community involvement and mobilization approach was discussed for an emergency response system for an emergency outbreak such as Ebola.

Bottom up Approach

Bottom-up strategies use group interviews and surveys with stakeholders to extract metrics directly and measure the resilience (Kati & Jari, 2016). Top-down methods use current secondary information to selectively extract proxy metrics and measure durability, such as demographic or economic reports. Theoretically, a bottom-up measure of resilience should be carried out at a national level and a top-down assessment of resilience at a regional scale (Kati & Jari, 2016). Nonetheless, there is typically an inverse relationship between size and community engagement operations, so that bottom-up evaluations appear to be carried out at community level and top-down assessments at state, national or international levels. The choice of top-down or bottom-up evaluation is an important factor as it dictates the level of group participation in the evaluation process, affects the expense and spatial nature of the evaluation, and the ability to evaluate using standardized data across units of study. It is also important to consider each strategy's range, as both have a spatial or interpretive restriction point below which sustainability assumptions would be no longer applicable (Conway et al., 2019).

Community Engagement

Warning alerts need to be related to early intervention, while local communities need to be active and educated to improve their Ebola epidemic resiliency. Community involvement and more general awareness-raising have led to substantial behavioral change – from decreasing physical contact with others and minimizing in-country travel to through hand-washing and care-seeking behaviors – by engaging and empowering individuals and societies to bring about changes in society and environment. Communities and their members needed to be active in the entire process for these programs to succeed-from development and buy-in to participation and implementation (Smithies & Webster, 2018). Local channels of trusted local leaders have been engaged in informing and working with their neighborhoods to eliminate Ebola spread and perform an effective role within their neighborhoods. For growing person and community awareness and increasing risk behaviors and stigma, simple, reliable, truthful, and culturally responsive communications and outreach and social mobilization efforts are essential.

Community Consultation

Even in a health epidemic, planners and public authorities need reliable information about possible human actions. Representatives of the group have to be briefed about the concerns they have about these circumstances and the strategy they have to come out of it. Contrary to public belief - and popular media portrayals - people are advised not to flee in fear, wander in surprise without a target, or docilely comply with the authorities' recommendations (Jacobs, 2016). Representatives are often consulted on how to behave rationally in terms of their limited knowledge of the Ebola situation. Also consulting the community about the after-impact situations. Community members are assured survivors, and care will be given first to the injured and help others defend properties from any further harm. In requesting help, people were more likely than government organizations or even quasi-official outlets such as the Red Cross to approach informal outlets such as associates, family, and neighborhood groupings. So when seeking help, they'll be a proper planning in informing the officials. Finally, concerned people feel that they can better support the victims by reaching the region of impact to donate blood, food, and clothes, though doing so causes huge convergence issues (Resnik, 2018).

Participation

Emergency planning should encourage inter-organization cooperation to be effective. Methods should be established to obtain involvement, dedication, and strong agreement from all institutions involved in the response. Such organizations will include departments for public safety such as emergency control, ambulance, security, and emergency medical care. Nevertheless, they should also consider possible sources of danger, such as emergency services and transporters (pipeline, rail, truck and barge), and organizations that need to protect vulnerable communities, such as schools, hospitals, and clinics. Coordination is needed because even emergency response agencies with various capacities need to work together to execute the four main responsive functions-emergency evaluation, threat activities, community safety, and mitigation plans (McLean et al. 2018).

Organization

The company will be almost entirely a group to prepare for emergencies. The agency will also have regulatory/supervisory duties in addition to emergency management (such as assessing whether dams have been properly built or whether building inspectors have the necessary emergency-relevant knowledge). The agency will concentrate mainly on disaster planning during normal times, but may also have organizational or management duties during national emergencies. The company should have a very large mission; it should take on a wide range of functions including policymaking, planning, resource procurement, information collection, monitoring, operations, and training (Nuriddin et al., 2018).

Capacity Building

Emergency preparedness also has a dimension that involves preparation and assessment. In such conditions, the communities need to know what is going to happen in a crisis, or what can or cannot be done around them by community organizations. The first phase of the planning cycle includes outlining the plan's provisions to departmental managers and personnel who will be participating in the emergency response. Second, all those with emergency response positions must be prepared to do their homework. This, of course, requires personnel from fire, police, and emergency medical services, but there should also be training for staff in hospitals, colleges, care facilities, and other services who may need to take preventive action (Smith, 2019). Finally, the at-risk groups must be included in the strategic planning so that they can become informed that preparation for risks to the community has been under progress and realize what is required of them including such plans.

Action

It is also important that preparation, in the context of assessments and activities, be accompanied by evaluation to decide if it has been successful. The arrangement of health care services to handle the Ebola outbreak should be done priorly. Emergency drills and simulations offer an environment in which everyone can also check the adequacy of the emergency management plan, operating procedures, personnel, tools, and services. Besides, multifunctional exercises (exercises that measure the capacity of a jurisdiction to execute all four emergency response functions-emergency evaluation, hazard operations, public safety and crisis management) promote inter-organizational interaction, allowing leaders of various agencies to better understand each other's technical skills and personal characteristics (Jacobsen et al., 2016). The multifunctional drills also create awareness for the wider emergency response process, reminding community members and the public that crisis planning is underway and enhancing preparedness.

Empowerment

Preparation and empowering the community is a constant process as circumstances within the community change over time, circumstances outside the community may also change and the planning goods themselves change. In-community the health outbreak can cause conditions making exposure to risks, organizational personnel and structures, and equipment and services for emergencies. The government legislation shall empower the communities that in such conditions the aid will be provided without fail. The planning process should involve providing tangible products that can be used by the members in the Ebola outbreak (Kickbusch & Reddy, 2016). Food and security shall be arranged priorly which can give a sense of confidence in people. An explanation of these intangible goods is the production of awareness of emergency responders about the demands of crises, about their emergency service responsibilities, and the capacities of other agencies. The continuous work for improvement in these three areas allows the emergency preparation process to identify and respond to all the changes and regularly-and at least annually-evaluate all aspects of emergency preparedness.

Conclusion on Community Health And Disease Prevention

Continued engagement and interaction with community groups at the community level during a health crisis like Ebola helps create faith and trust in response efforts and promotes community participation and response. Bottom-up strategies use group interviews and stakeholder surveys to directly extract metrics, and measure resilience. For these programs to succeed from development and buy-in to participation and implementation, communities and their members needed to be active throughout the process. Coordination is needed because even emergency response agencies with different capacities need to work together to execute the main responsive functions.

References for Community Health And Disease Prevention

Carlisle, K., Farmer, J., Taylor, J., Larkins, S., & Evans, R. (2018). Evaluating community participation: A comparison of participatory approaches in the planning and implementation of new primary health?care services in northern Australia. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 33(3), 704-722.

Conway, D., Nicholls, R. J., Brown, S., Tebboth, M. G., Adger, W. N., Ahmad, B. & Said, M. (2019). The need for bottom-up assessments of climate risks and adaptation in climate-sensitive regions. Nature Climate Change, 9(7), 503-511.

Jacobs, G. A. (2016). Community-based psychological first aid: A practical guide to helping individuals and communities during difficult times. Butterworth-Heinemann

Jacobsen, K., Aguirre, A., Bailey, C., Baranova, A., Crooks, A., Croitoru, A. & Pierobon, M. (2016). Lessons from the Ebola outbreak: Action items for emerging infectious disease preparedness and response. EcoHealth, 13(1), 200-212.

Kati, V., & Jari, N. (2016). Bottom-up thinking—Identifying socio-cultural values of ecosystem services in local blue–green infrastructure planning in Helsinki, Finland. Land Use Policy, 50, 537-547.

Kickbusch, I., & Reddy, K. (2016). Community matters–why outbreak responses need to integrate health promotion. Global Health Promotion, 23(1), 75-78.

McLean, K. E., Abramowitz, S. A., Ball, J. D., Monger, J., Tehoungue, K., McKune, S. L., & Omidian, P. (2018). Community-based reports of morbidity, mortality, and health-seeking behaviours in four Monrovia communities during the West African Ebola epidemic. Global Public Health, 13(5), 528-544.

Nuriddin, A., Jalloh, M., Meyer, E., Bunnell, R., Bio, F. A., Jalloh, M. & Morgan, O. (2018). Trust, fear, stigma and disruptions: community perceptions and experiences during periods of low but ongoing transmission of Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone, 2015. BMJ Global Health, 3(2).

Resnik, D. (2018). The ethics of research with human subjects: Protecting people, advancing science, promoting trust (Vol. 74). Springer.

Smith, J. (2019). Overcoming the ‘tyranny of the urgent’: integrating gender into disease outbreak preparedness and response. Gender & Development, 27(2), 355-369.

Smithies, J., & Webster, G. (2018). Community involvement in health: from passive recipients to active participants. Routledge.

Strong, A. & Schwartz, D. (2019). Effects of the West African Ebola Epidemic on Health Care of Pregnant Women: Stigmatization With and Without Infection. In Pregnant in the Time of Ebola (pp. 11-30). Springer, Cham.

World Health Organization. (2016). Clinical care for survivors of Ebola virus disease: Interim Guidance (No. WHO/EVD/OHE/PED/16.1 Rev. 2). World Health Organization.

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