Community Engagement and Mobilization Strategy for Emergency Response Plan for Ebola Outbreak in Australia

Running head: COMMUNITY HEALTH
Community health
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1COMMUNITY HEALTH
Introduction:
Community engagement is one of the solutions to successfully mitigate any disease or
outbreak (Wilkinson et al., 2017). The outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo was an event that triggered a public health emergency of global
importance. It was the first time that the world noticed the complexity of the epidemic and the
World Health Organization declared EVD outbreak officially in March, 2016 (World Health
Organization, 2019). Due to the fear that EVD could spread beyond Africa, many countries
started making plans for health emergency preparedness in response to this health issue. Similar
response was taken by Australia too when it increased internal response to increase screening of
incoming passengers at international airports (Gilberta, 2016). Although there is no confirmed
case reported so far in Australia, however possibility of suspected cases suggests the need to take
better actions in the community. This report will give an overview of plan for community
engagement and mobilization strategy on emergency response plan for EVD outbreak in the
context of Australia.
Overview of the key issues:
Emergency response preparedness (ERP) is the process of foreseeing any emergencies
that are likely to occur in the future and implement appropriate actions to respond faster to a
health or environmental emergencies. Ebola outbreak is an epidemic that attracted international
attention and as this outbreak can initiate in Australia too, it is necessary that local communities
in Australia collaborate with relevant emergency preparedness team to properly respond to the
Ebola epidemic. Hence, promoting activities to ensure strong community engagement is needed.
By community engagement and mobilization strategies, it would be possible to involve local

2COMMUNITY HEALTH
community groups in response efforts and develop the capacity of the staffs to detect new cases
and identify people at risk. Proper training and communication with community members can
help to stop the transmission of the disease too (Wilkinson et al., 2017). While planning
community engagement strategy for an emergency response plan, it will be crucial to take
relevant actions at each stage of engagement, consultation, participation, organisation, capacity
building, action and empowerment.
Use of approaches to health emergency preparedness and response
Disaster management takes place through a number of stages such as top down approach
and the bottoms-up approach. There are many approaches to health emergency preparedness and
response. Two common types of approach is the top down approach and the bottoms-up
approach. The top-down approach refers to those decisions or actions that taken by the state
government and which leads to implementation of various regulations. It aims to identify the big
picture of a problem and then making proper goal or plan for response. However, the top-down
approach believes that the state institutions have the responsibility to provide immediate support
during any health emergencies (Parsons et al., 2016). Although the top-down approach helps to
get support directly from the top authorities and these actions have a wider rich, however one of
the factors for criticism of the top down approach is that it provides limited ways of looking at
problems that exists at the community level. As the top-down approach is dependent on senior
decision makers without the engagement of the lower level officials and private sectors, taking
top-down approach is crucial to appeal to all. (Tsamandouras, Rostami‐Hodjegan & Aarons,
2015) also summarized the overall sufferings of the top-down approach by stating that it offers
too narrow and static picture of disaster management.