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by Erma Manoncourt (Editor), Rafael Obregon (Editor), Ketan Chitnis (Editor)
This book provides readers with a critical, conceptual and applied understanding of the role of communication and community engagement for disease outbreak preparedness and response.
Until the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, for several years public health authorities and influential voices in the international public health community have warned of a pandemic and therefore a need to strengthen governments and communities' ability to prevent and respond to it effectively to minimize its impact on lives and economies. While investments have focused on clinical, diagnostic, and vaccine research, preventing and minimizing the impact of disease outbreaks requires a wider socio-ecological systems approach that places communities at the centre of the response. Such an approach is still rare in public health practice. One of the key lessons that the authors have learned, and on which they reflect in the chapters, is that technical inputswill be as effective as they are fully integrated within the broader architecture of disease outbreak preparedness and response. The ten chapters of this contributed volume are organized under three parts: a conceptual framework, case studies, and recommendations.
Communication and Community Engagement in Disease Outbreaks is a timely and essential resource for public health managers, donors, implementers, organizations engaged in disease prevention and control and academics called on to support the response. These audiences should benefit from this approach as the book highlights dimensions that are often under-resourced.
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This book provides readers with critical conceptual and applied elements that may contribute to implementation of effective communication and community engagement for disease outbreak preparedness and response. Until the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, for several years public health authorities and influential voices in the international public health community have warned of a pandemic and therefore a need to strengthen governments and communities' ability to prevent and respond to it effectively to minimize its impact on lives and economies. While investments have focused on clinical, diagnostic, and vaccine research, preventing and minimizing the impact of disease outbreaks requires a wider socio-ecological systems approach that places communities at the centre of the response. Such an approach is still rare in public health practice. One of the key lessons that the authors have learned, and on which they reflect in thechapters, is that technical inputs will be as effective as they are fully integrated within the broader architecture of disease outbreak preparedness and response. The ten chapters of this contributed volume are organized under three parts: a conceptual framework, case studies, and recommendations.
Social and Behavior Change Communication in Disease Outbreaks is a timely and essential resource for public health managers, donors, implementers, organizations engaged in disease prevention and control and academics called on to support the response. These audiences should benefit from this approach as the book highlights dimensions that are often under-resourced.
"This book is exceptionally timely given the current COVID-19 pandemic and humanitarian consequences and will be of interest to professionals, students, and academics. There is not another book that covers this important topic so comprehensively."
-Glenn Laverack. Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy; Member - WHO Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health
Author Biography
Erma Manoncourt, PhD is the Founder and President of Management & Development Consulting Inc., which provides technical support services to international development and humanitarian programmes, specializing in social and behaviour change programming and intervention design. She is an Adjunct Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po in France and Senior Lecturer at the New York University School of Global Public Health in the USA. Dr. Manoncourt is a Board member of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) and Co-Chair of the IUHPE Global Working Group on the Social Determinants of Health. Most recently, she has provided technical support in Risk Communication and Community Engagement programming during both the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa (2014-2015) and the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Rafael Obregon, PhD is the UNICEF Country Representative in Paraguay since July 2019. Prior to this, he led UNICEF´s Communication for Development Section globally, was an Associate Professor at Ohio University, and worked as Regional Health Communication Specialist for the World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). He has supported several responses to humanitarian situations and to public health emergencies and disease outbreaks, including the 2014 - 2015 West Africa Ebola Outbreak and the 2016 Zika outbreak. He is a member of the Forum on Microbial Threats since 2017, and in 2016 served in the Advisory Committee to the WHO's International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Zika virus. He has published extensively on global health communication and outbreak response.
Ketan Chitnis, PhD is currently Chief of Communication for Development in UNICEF Mozambique. Previously he has worked with UNICEF in South Asia, East-Asia and the Pacific Region and in New York. Ketan has worked on several disease outbreak responses since 2006 including Avian and Pandemic Flu, Zika, Yellow Fever, Cholera, Ebola and now COVID-19, supporting the UN's response for risk and behavior change communication and community engagement. He has also worked on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support and on community health. He has taught and published on topics in communication for development and health communication in several journals.
