WITH PEOPLE: Communication, Community Engagement, COVID-19, and Preparing for Future Pandemics

"Despite the scale reached and the impact that resulted, conducting communication and community action work in the context of a pandemic has proved a struggle. The communication and community engagement perspective and learning, with the important analysis it provides, is often missing from the strategy."

Many thousands of COVID-19-focused communication and community engagement strategies have been implemented across all countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the hope of spotlighting these efforts and advocating for the centralisation of such approaches within the overall pandemic response, on March 21 2021, a group of 24 experts in the field of communication for social change and behaviour change participated online in the COVID-19 Independent Panel Roundtable on Communication and Community Engagement. The specific purpose of their participation was to help guide the work of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which was established in September 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General with the aim of exploring how and why COVID-19 became a global pandemic and what lessons can be learned. The 24 experts talked with the Independent Panel members about:

• Their analysis of the COVID-19 communication and community engagement response in their own contexts and/or areas of expertise, including concrete examples, highlighting successes and challenges;
• Their analysis of the communication and community engagement responses of international and regional organisations, including the WHO, again focused on successes as well as challenges; and
• Their specific proposals for what the Panel should recommend to the World Health Assembly in late May 2021, to improve preparedness and response in the area of communication and community engagement.

In this paper highlighting the experts' recommendations for the Independent Panel [PDF], they stress that "Pandemics are all about people....An effective pandemic response requires people and their communities to be central actors in the action to prepare for and counter the pandemic threat." They provide several examples of what is already happening - e.g., in Ghana, the creation of community information centres often housed in people's homes in low connectivity areas or shops outfitted with microphones and loudspeakers to enable citizens around the community to hear crucial announcements related to COVID-19. As the experts stress, "structural and inequitable forces both drive the nature of a pandemic and highlight the necessity of communication and community engagement for a deep response to future pandemics....Emotional and/or uninformed reactions are the reasons often used by policymakers for why people do not follow the rules. But these challenges have cultural, economic, and social roots that need to be attended to and worked with for effective pandemic response and preparation."

When people - in all their diversity - are successfully recognised as central to pandemic response and empowered to act accordingly, they can have an impact. The paper [PDF] offers just a few examples of credible, at-scale, development issue change research data from communication and community engagement strategies that have worked in various contexts (see also Appendix A in the paper). To have such an impact, the experts suggest that effective international and national pandemic action (including preparation) requires:

• The development of policies that create the best possible spaces for effective action;
• A prominence for the voice, learning, and perspective of those most affected;
• The provision of accurate information that is clearly updated as that information changes;
• Regular, independent, data-driven feedback on the progress (or lack thereof) being made; and
• Financial and technical support that is at levels commensurate with the problems and challenges being faced.

Next, the experts shared [PDF] their experiences with and assessment of the COVID-19 communication and community engagement performance of government and major international organisations. On the positive side, one expert pointed to "The Collective Service [for Risk Communication and Community Engagement, which] was established and has been offering a useful set of guidance and tools though it seems that it took a bit of time to get organized - there was a lot of lesson learning in the process." On the other hand, there were some negative assessments, such as this one: "Challenge lies in getting to the grassroots. The formulators of the messages should help facilitate the process of framing those messages into culturally understood images, communications and African traditional frames. As an example for now, in many villages, COVID is considered an urban disease. I got this response when I asked one person why he was not wearing a mask at a tradition meeting: 'That is the disease for you people in Lusaka. There is nothing like that here.'"

Flowing from the analysis above, a draft set of recommendations follow [PDF] for consideration by the Independent Panel. These are designed to address and take major steps towards five major themes that emerged in the consultation:

• Strengthening the engagement of local communities as key actors in pandemic planning and action related to their contexts - pandemic action.
• Strengthening the ability of people and communities to identify, understand, analyse, interpret, and communicate about pandemics - pandemic literacy.
• Strengthening the communication and community engagement capacity of the United Nations (UN) system to plan and respond to pandemics - pandemic policies and support.
• Clarifying the coordination roles and relationships amongst and between UN agencies in pandemic planning and action situations - pandemic coordination.
• Significantly increasing the funding available for local, national, and international communication and community engagement action related to pandemics - pandemic funding.

In brief, the draft set of recommendations for consideration by the Independent Panel includes (see the paper [PDF] for the rationale for each):

1. That within 5 years, 90% of all communities over 20,000 in population will be able to (a) identify the lead local focal point person for pandemic preparation, (b) list the local government and civil society organisations engaged in pandemic preparation, and (c) outline the major elements of their strategy.
2. That in any new national pandemic taskforces that are established or in existing national pandemic planning and coordination bodies, 25% of the membership in the core policy and budgeting processes are people from local communities and communication and community engagement practitioners.
3. That a major self-standing fund with a target of 1 billion dollars is established to provide direct support for communication and community engagement pandemic planning and action, with local action and planning a priority.
4. That within the UN system, a body is created that has the clear lead role for communication and community engagement related to pandemics with a remit that includes global and regional coordination of all relevant UN entities. The experts' preference is for a body that sits independent from any one UN entity.
5. That there is a high priority focus across all development organisations on the provision of accurate information about pandemics and greatly expanded community- and national-level dialogue about that knowledge.

Click here for the 12-page document in PDF format.