Pre-positioning an evaluation of cash assistance programming in an acute emergency: strategies and lessons learned from a study in Raqqa Governorate, Syria

Falb, Kathryn; Annan, Jeannie

doi:10.1186/s13031-021-00340-1

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Therefore, our manuscript introduces novelty to the literature and opens space for future research. Notably, there have been reports, and even systematic reviews, of the provision of cash-based assistance for people who live in the area of conflict [ 57 , 58 ]. However, such assistance is essentially different from the provision of medical support as presented herein.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical aid to war victims in Syria in 2019: a report of organized healthcare support from a charity organization

Przepiórka

Boguszewski

Smuniewski

et al. 2022

BMC Health Serv Res

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Background In 2011, a civil war started in Syria, which is on-going and has reached a death toll of over 400,000 people. Humanitarian organizations, including Aid to The Church in Need (ACN), have strived to provide help and medical support to the civilian victims. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of data gathered in ACN projects in Syria in 2019. The datasets included descriptions of diseases, treatments, costs, cities, and hospitals. For each patient, we assigned the following additional categories: type of help (treatment, diagnosis, or nonmedical), type of treatment (medical or surgical), medical specialty, gross anatomic region, and presence of trauma. Results A total of 3835 patients benefited from ACN support in Syria in 2019. The majority of financial support went towards treatment (78.4%), while other support went towards nonmedical help (15.7%) or providing a diagnosis (5.9%). Among treatments, 66.6% were medical and 33.4% surgical. The most common medical specialty was internal medicine (48.4%), followed by public health (13.7%) and surgery (7.3%). Anatomic region was undefined in 68.3% of cases and, when defined, was most commonly the abdominal cavity and pelvis (13%). The vast majority of cases 95.1%) were not associated with trauma. Procedural costs were highest in the Valley of Christians region, and lowest in Tartous. Network graphs were used to visualize the three most common diagnoses and treatments for each medical specialty. Conclusions The present report describes the treatment of war victims in Syria in 2019. The patients lacked the most basic medical or surgical healthcare. Charity organizations, like ACN, constitute a valuable source of information about the healthcare of war victims. Unfortunately, the methods of describing medical treatment provided to civilian victims remain underdeveloped. Future studies will require the cooperation of healthcare providers, humanists, and social workers. The present findings can help to optimize the provision of humanitarian help by charity organizations, by tailoring projects to the specific needs of Syrian war victims.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical aid to war victims in Syria in 2019: a report of organized healthcare support from a charity organization

Przepiórka

Boguszewski

Smuniewski

et al. 2022

BMC Health Serv Res

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“…This approach visualizes the timeframe in which the participants were asked to recall information throughout the interview by drawing a timeline of their life while asking questions from the interview guide by period in the conflict: pre-recruitment, recruitment, and post-recruitment. The life-line technique is a recommended best practice for qualitative research on past experiences of violence [ 33 ], and has been used for research on conflict experiences [ 34 ] and research with children [ 35 ]. The guide included questions on their household dynamics and experiences during each of these periods and how they changed over time, as well as why they did or did not engage with armed groups and how they reintegrated into their families and communities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of ‘voluntary’ recruitment and challenges for families with adolescents engaged with armed groups: Qualitative insights from Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo

Blackwell

Agengo²,

Ozoukou

et al. 2023

PLOS Glob Public Health

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Globally, armed conflicts have increased threefold since 2010. The number of children voluntarily engaging with armed groups is also rising, despite increasing efforts to prevent this grave human rights violation. However, traditional approaches focusing on the prevention, release, and reintegration of children through forced recruitment do not adequately address the complex and interlinking push and pull factors of voluntary recruitment. This qualitative study sought to deepen understanding of the drivers and consequences of voluntary recruitment from the perspectives of adolescents and their caregivers, as well as to explore how to better support families living in conflict settings. In-depth interviews were conducted with 74 adolescents (44 boys and 30 girls) ages 14 to 20 years and 39 caregivers (18 men and 21 women) ages 32 to 66 years in two distinct conflict settings: North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ouham-Pendé, Central African Republic. Interviews with adolescents utilized a visual narrative technique. The findings examine the unique perspectives of adolescents engaged with armed groups and their caregivers to understand how conflict experiences, economic insecurity, and social insecurity influence adolescent’s engagement with armed groups and reintegration with their families. The study found that families living in conflict settings are subject to traumatic experiences and economic hardship that erode protective family relationships, leaving adolescent boys and girls particularly vulnerable to the systemic and overlapping factors that influence them to engage with and return to armed groups. The findings illustrate how these factors can disrupt protective social structures, and inversely how familial support can act as a potential protective factor against recruitment and break the cycle of reengagement. By better understanding the experiences of adolescents enduring recruitment and how to support caregivers of those adolescents, more comprehensive programming models can be developed to adequately prevent voluntary recruitment and promote successful reintegration, enabling children to reach their full potential.

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transfers [1], promoting better education for children [2], advancing mental health and psychosocial programming for people affected by disaster [3], and improving the safety and wellbeing of women and children in conflictaffected zones [4,5]. Methodologies have also advanced substantially such that studies can be pre-positioned for acute crises to promote the effectiveness of anticipatory action or find creative approaches to build comparison groups that do not delay receipt of aid, but rather ethically exploit organic programmatic delivery cycles and targeting procedures [6] or use propensity score matching approaches [7]. Nonetheless, while the generation of rigorous evidence of impact has increased, the ability to reach scale, sustainability, and equity across settings within humanitarian programming has been suboptimal.

BackgroundDelivering evidence-based programming in humanitarian crises grappling with war, climate change, and disaster is a formidable challenge.

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confidence: 99%

Five recommendations to advance implementation science for humanitarian settings: the next frontier of humanitarian research

Falb,

Kullenberg,

T Yuan

et al. 2024

Confl Health

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Challenges in delivering evidence-based programming in humanitarian crises require new strategies to enhance implementation science for better decision-making. A recent scoping review highlights the scarcity of peer-reviewed studies on implementation in conflict zones. In this commentary, we build on this scoping review and make five recommendations for advancing implementation science for humanitarian settings. These include (1) expanding existing frameworks and tailoring them to humanitarian dynamics, (2) utilizing hybrid study designs for effectiveness-implementation studies, (3) testing implementation strategies, (4) leveraging recent methodological advancements in social and data science, and (5) enhancing training and community engagement. These approaches aim to address gaps in understanding intervention effectiveness, scale, sustainability, and equity in humanitarian settings. Integrating implementation science into humanitarian research is essential for informed decision-making and improving outcomes for affected populations.

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Pre-positioning an evaluation of cash assistance programming in an acute emergency: strategies and lessons learned from a study in Raqqa Governorate, Syria

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Medical aid to war victims in Syria in 2019: a report of organized healthcare support from a charity organization

Medical aid to war victims in Syria in 2019: a report of organized healthcare support from a charity organization

Drivers of ‘voluntary’ recruitment and challenges for families with adolescents engaged with armed groups: Qualitative insights from Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo

Five recommendations to advance implementation science for humanitarian settings: the next frontier of humanitarian research

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