Community Mapping and Public Health Emergency Preparedness

Details

Mission and objectives

WHO DNK organization mission TBD

Context

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies (WHE) Programme is to build the capacity of Member States to manage health emergency risks and, when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international health response to contain outbreaks and to provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations.
The WHE’s Risk Communication, Community Engagement and Infodemic Management Unit (RCI) ensures that people and stakeholders are enabled and empowered to make informed decisions that protect them from health emergencies. To do so, RCI communicates risks and preventive measures, engages communities and community actors, manages rumours and misinformation, builds country capacities and supports country responses, and positions RCCE-IM as an evidence-based technical area of work and WHO Europe as an authoritative partner in it.
In an effort to build the evidence to inform community engagement approaches in the European Region, the RCI Unit will collaborate with an online volunteer, academic experts, and community actors for the development of a conceptual framework and tool to conduct a mapping exercise with a focus on identifying relevant community actors and structures for health emergency preparedness.
Following piloting and peer-review, this tool will be standardized, promoted and adapted to other countries in the European Region.

Task description

1. Conduct a thorough literature review on existing community mapping approaches and tools for public health emergency preparedness in the European Region and globally.
2. Support analysis the data from the pilot mapping exercise and prepare an initial report detailing the findings.
3. Document findings in an effort to provide recommendations for health authorities on how to identify community structures that can be activated in an emergency.
4. Provide recommendations for the development a conceptual framework for understanding community structures, their needs, capacities, and trusted sources of information.
5. Support a publication detailing the conceptual framework, protocol, mapping exercise findings, and tool for health authorities to be replicated in the future.