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Background <p>Since the largest outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease 2014–2016, the concept of community engagement (CE) gained popularity in global frameworks and strategies to tackle infectious disease. Recent studies suggest that CE might be a useful approach to understand and resolve vulnerabilities in the light of infectious diseases and other threats to communities across the world. Several guidelines for CE are available. In the SoNAR-Global project we used the UNICEF Minimum Standards for Community Engagement as a lens to examine our CE activities and as a tool to develop a coherent CE methodology with our country partner teams.</p> Methods <p>With focus-group discussions and semi-structured interviews we supported our teams to plan and implement community-based vulnerability assessment and reduction activities in the context of SoNAR-Global, an international research project carried out in multiple countries simultaneously during the COVID-19 pandemic using an evidence-informed methodology.</p> Results <p>We describe how the six UNICEF core standards “participation, empowerment and ownership, inclusion, two-way communication, adaptability and localization as well as building on local capacity” were used to harmonize CE activities across country teams at two levels within the SoNAR-Global project: vulnerability assessment (research level) and translation into actionable recommendations (implementation level).</p> Conclusions <p>For CE activities during pandemics, we suggest considerations towards an adequate definition of community as well as recurring discussions with project partners on the implications of a chosen CE guideline. Structuring CE projects with a Logical Framework Approach (LFA) could facilitate the definition of CE goals at different levels of a project and promotes the use of verifiable indicators, thus supporting measurability as well as evaluation and accountability.</p>

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Community engagement in epidemics – experiences from the SoNAR-Global COVID-19 vulnerability assessment

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月4日

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  • Paul Grohma,
  • Mandy Geise,
  • Jacob Osborne,
  • Michel Dückers,
  • Anna Maria Volkmann,
  • David Napier,
  • Tamara Giles-Vernick,
  • Ruth Kutalek

摘要

Background

Since the largest outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease 2014–2016, the concept of community engagement (CE) gained popularity in global frameworks and strategies to tackle infectious disease. Recent studies suggest that CE might be a useful approach to understand and resolve vulnerabilities in the light of infectious diseases and other threats to communities across the world. Several guidelines for CE are available. In the SoNAR-Global project we used the UNICEF Minimum Standards for Community Engagement as a lens to examine our CE activities and as a tool to develop a coherent CE methodology with our country partner teams.

Methods

With focus-group discussions and semi-structured interviews we supported our teams to plan and implement community-based vulnerability assessment and reduction activities in the context of SoNAR-Global, an international research project carried out in multiple countries simultaneously during the COVID-19 pandemic using an evidence-informed methodology.

Results

We describe how the six UNICEF core standards “participation, empowerment and ownership, inclusion, two-way communication, adaptability and localization as well as building on local capacity” were used to harmonize CE activities across country teams at two levels within the SoNAR-Global project: vulnerability assessment (research level) and translation into actionable recommendations (implementation level).

Conclusions

For CE activities during pandemics, we suggest considerations towards an adequate definition of community as well as recurring discussions with project partners on the implications of a chosen CE guideline. Structuring CE projects with a Logical Framework Approach (LFA) could facilitate the definition of CE goals at different levels of a project and promotes the use of verifiable indicators, thus supporting measurability as well as evaluation and accountability.