Challenges and needs for social behavioural research and community engagement activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in rural Mozambique

Abstract

After the Ebola outbreaks the world is again facing a challenge in which human behaviours and contact history play crucial roles in determining the trends in disease spreading within and across communities. With the onset of the recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, several issues related to conducting social behavioural sciences research and related community engagement activities arise, especially in rural areas of low-income countries, where the coverage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is limited and their application on field-based research would imply a biased selection of relatively more privileged minorities with access to on-line and other communication platforms not requiring physical contact. This article enumerates and discusses the different technical challenges that social behavioural sciences research and community engagement activities face in times of public health emergencies caused by pandemics such as COVID-19. It also highlights the possibility of using alternative approaches to maintain the engagement with members of rural communities in research and social action activities, as well as the ethical challenges arising from such approaches.

Effective Communication at Different Phases of COVID-19 Prevention: Roles, Enablers and Barriers

“…A more effective strategy may be to communicate the concept of individual COVID-19 risk and harm reduction based on dynamic social situations rather than ideals [75], while working towards building public trust in authorities [76,77]. Community engagement with locale-specific scenarios and taking into consideration respective lifestyles and needs should be part of communication strategies, and only followed by (compassionate) enforcement of many novel and changing civilian restrictions [78][79][80]. The individual "casualties" of COVID-19 related restrictions, often people already underprivileged [67], highlight the need to enhance efforts for empowerment and buy-in rather than relying heavily on enforcement, which may be susceptible to biases and unable to account for nuances in community needs and priorities.…”

Perceptions and compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures in Southern and Central regions of Mozambique: a quantitative in-person household survey in the districts of Manhiça and Quelimane

“…Even the IRB at CISM was puzzled on whether this study could be approved due to safety issues and the request made by the study team for using oral audio-recorded consents instead of the commonly used written consents. At that time, most studies were collecting data using information and communication technologies (ICTs)(22), but this was not recommended for Manhiça and Quelimane where the coverage of ICTs was very limited – which could lead to exclusion of participants without access to ICTs (23). For example, a study on COVID-19 preventive behaviour using ICTs in China, required that participants should have been previously registered in an online-based survey platform and be literate, which means that all those not registered in that platform or who were illiterate were excluded; and it ended up with only 13% of participants from rural areas and 87% from urban areas (24).…”

Teaching and incentives: Substitutes or complements?

“…Additional challenges in health crises often include underlying institutional mistrust and misinformation (Vinck et al, 2019) and logistical obstacles to needs assessments and outreach with vulnerable populations (Checchi et al, 2017). In this context, we demonstrate simple interventions that can complement phone data collection during epidemics Maffioli, 2020;Magaço et al, 2021). In particular, our Teaching intervention shows that providing feedback on knowledge-based questions is a feasible and impactful add-on to health surveys-for example, on "knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP)" surveys common in public health.…”