Community engagement for COVID-19 prevention and control: a rapid evidence synthesis

  1. Brynne Gilmore
  2. Rawlance Ndejjo
  3. Adalbert Tchetchia
  4. Vergil de Claro
  5. Elizabeth Mago
  6. Alpha A Diallo
  7. Claudia Lopes
  8. Sanghita Bhattacharyya

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Abstract

Community engagement has been considered a fundamental component of past outbreaks, such as Ebola. However, there is concern over the lack of involvement of communities and ‘bottom-up’ approaches used within COVID-19 responses thus far. Identifying how community engagement approaches have been used in past epidemics may support more robust implementation within the COVID-19 response.

Methodology

A rapid evidence review was conducted to identify how community engagement is used for infectious disease prevention and control during epidemics. Three databases were searched in addition to extensive snowballing for grey literature. Previous epidemics were limited to Ebola, Zika, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndromeand H1N1 since 2000. No restrictions were applied to study design or language.

Results

From 1112 references identified, 32 articles met our inclusion criteria, which detail 37 initiatives. Six main community engagement actors were identified: local leaders, community and faith-based organisations, community groups, health facility committees, individuals and key stakeholders. These worked on different functions: designing and planning, community entry and trust building, social and behaviour change communication, risk communication, surveillance and tracing, and logistics and administration.

Conclusion

COVID-19’s global presence and social transmission pathways require social and community responses. This may be particularly important to reach marginalised populations and to support equity-informed responses. Aligning previous community engagement experience with current COVID-19 community-based strategy recommendations highlights how communities can play important and active roles in prevention and control. Countries worldwide are encouraged to assess existing community engagement structures and use community engagement approaches to support contextually specific, acceptable and appropriate COVID-19 prevention and control measures.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003188
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.17.20133876: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Databases and Snowballing: In line with rapid review recommendations, we limited our searches to three databases: PubMed, CINHAL and Scopus.
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: As this was a rapid review, our database searching and snowballing was limited in scope and time which may have resulted in missing articles. In addition, while our search terms attempted to include for all relevant topics related to community engagement, and we did include search terms for specific community-based interventions (i.e. SBCC and risk communication), this was not exhaustive which may have resulted in missing articles. Several articles were limited in detail, and extracting and labelling content was at the review team’s discretion, which may have resulted in incorrect coding on the type of actors and interventions. This may have been particularly relevant in situations where the engagement approaches and interventions conducted were of similar nature, for instance the distinction between CFBOs and community groups, and SBCC and risk communication. Nevertheless, this review shares important lessons regarding community engagement approaches from past epidemics that should guide COVID-19 response.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.17.20133876v1 on medRxiv