Emergency Response Plan: Ebola Outbreak Community Engagement Strategy

This report outlines a community engagement and mobilization strategy for an Ebola outbreak in Australia, focusing on emergency response preparedness. The report begins with an introduction highlighting the importance of community engagement in mitigating disease outbreaks, specifically referencing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the subsequent need for preparedness in countries like Australia. It provides an overview of key issues related to emergency response preparedness (ERP) and emphasizes the need for community collaboration and mobilization. The report then discusses different approaches to health emergency preparedness, contrasting the top-down and bottom-up approaches, ultimately advocating for a bottom-up approach for its democratic structure and responsiveness to community needs. The core of the report details a step-by-step community engagement and mobilization strategy, including engagement, consultation, participation, organization, and capacity building, all aimed at effectively responding to a potential Ebola outbreak. The conclusion reiterates the importance of community involvement and highlights the strengths of the proposed bottom-up approach, while also suggesting the applicability of the strategy to resource-constrained settings. References to relevant literature are included to support the strategies and approaches outlined in the report.

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

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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

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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.

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In contrast to the top-down approach, the key features of the bottoms-up approach is that
it is based on the assumption that policy making and actions are dependent on building social and
state capacity and communication between both private and public sectors. Compared to the top
down approach, one of the significant advantages of the bottom-up approach is that it offers a
democratic structure so that that interest of individuals not only at the top but also at bottom is
met. As any health emergency response requires cooperation, coordination and collaboration at
all levels, the bottom up approach is likely to be successful in addressing the citizen’s needs
(Serra-Llobet, Conrad & Schaefer, 2016). Hence, the bottoms-up approach will be used as a
framework to plan proper community engagement and mobilization strategy in response to
emergency preparedness for Ebola outbreak (Tsamandouras, Rostami‐Hodjegan & Aarons,
2015).
Community engagement and mobilization strategy:
To get prepared for outbreak of Ebola in Australia in the future and have the capacity to
implemented necessary humanitarian aid, the following community engagement and
mobilization strategies is proposed for the community:
Engagement:
The first step of action is engage with the desired community members and makes them
aware about the risk associated with an Ebola outbreak. Such form of risk communication can
help in giving risk information and this would lead to the implementation a community based
surveillance system. The first stage is crucial for securing community acceptance and getting the
support of community leaders in emergency response. For example, the medical control team
and health agencies can come in contact with community based leaders and other key decisions

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makers who can advocate for arranging resources and providing links to establish connection
with people who can reduce the risk of ebola. Much time needs to be given in community
meetings initially so that health agencies can establish trust with the community members.
According to Wilkinson et al. (2017), community meetings are a good platform to assess
community readiness in infection and disease prevention and understand key actions needed.
Risk communication is relevant with the behavioural theories to disaster and emergency healthy
preparedness too as these concepts shows how efforts to change human behaviours can increase
ability to cope with hazards (Ejeta, Ardalan & Paton, 2015).
Consultation:
This will be followed by consultation with experienced leaders to know about the cultural
values of the people and get proper guidance for the coordination of community engagement.
Consultation with experienced stakeholders can help to get idea about ways to overcome
community resistance, get better understanding about local context and socio-cultural norms and
issues related to routine immunization (Gillespie et al., 2016). Such form of cultural awareness
about the community can also help to build trust with the community and mobilize them to
engage in emergency preparedness.
Participation:
The next crucial step is to increase participation of community members in relevant
action to prevent and control the Ebola epidemic. This will require investments in many areas so
that strategic partnership could be build to promote relevant changes in response of ebola
screening. This is the most important strategy to achieve short and long term goals. At this stage,
it is important to reinforce the principle of community so that relevant partners understand the

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whole concept of community mobilization to achieve overarching goal of controlling the
epidemic in the future. There is a need to plan ways to develop both public and private
partnership so that surveillance process at important locations could be strengthened. This will
lead to optimization of systems and resources so that unmet needs are identify and proper
training and education resources are arranged to recover quickly from Ebola outbreak (Burnside-
Lawry & Carvalho, 2016).
Organization:
This stage will involve organization of different activities in the community to effectively
implement the emergency response plan for Ebola. Some strategic activities that needs to be
organized to prepare against the epidemic are as follows:
 To engage in coordination with multiple sectors so that proper rapid intervention team,
training centres, implementation of new information system and human resource
deployment could take place
 It would be necessary to map all the organizations which will participate in response.
 Activities related to surveillance, active case findings and follow-up of contacts will be
arranged to keep track of confirmed and probable cases. The evaluation of training and
supervision will be done through these activities too (WHO, 2019)..
 Arrangements will also be made to strengthen laboratory diagnostic capabilities in target
community so that adequate capacity for daily testing is maintained and confirmed and
suspected cases are referred to appropriate centres.
Capacity building

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Capacity building is the most important part which will determine the success of the
emergency response plan. It will involve paying attention to the recruitment, training and
ongoing support needs and implement proper process to manage them. To engage in successful
capacity building related to ebola preparedness, there is a need to provide common orientation to
all stakeholders and maintain a minimum care quality standard. Such measures can not only
improve the quality of the emergency response, but also reducing turnover rate during
emergency response activities (Wilkinson et al., 2017).
Conclusion:
To conclude, the above report identified the importance of community engagement in
controlling serious epidemic and presented a community engagement and mobilization plan to
enhance emergency response activities for Ebola in Australia. The use of bottom down approach
to emergency response is a strength of this plan as it ensure fulfilling needs of people at the
bottom and ensuring a democratic approach. The six stages of changes along with utilization of
behavioural models to emergency preparedness planning gives a lesson to implement similar
measures in low resource setting.

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References:
Burnside-Lawry, J., & Carvalho, L. (2016). A stakeholder approach to building community resilience:
awareness to implementation. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built
Environment, 7(1), 4-25.
Ejeta, L. T., Ardalan, A., & Paton, D. (2015). Application of behavioral theories to disaster and
emergency health preparedness: A systematic review. PLoS currents, 7.
Gilberta, G. L. (2016). Australia’s response to Ebola virus disease in West Africa, 2014–15. Public
health research & practice, 26(5).
Gillespie, A. M., Obregon, R., El Asawi, R., Richey, C., Manoncourt, E., Joshi, K., … Quereshi, S.
(2016). Social Mobilization and Community Engagement Central to the Ebola Response in West
Africa: Lessons for Future Public Health Emergencies. Global health, science and practice, 4(4),
626–646. doi:10.9745/GHSP-D-16-00226
Parsons, M., Glavac, S., Hastings, P., Marshall, G., McGregor, J., McNeill, J., ... & Stayner, R. (2016).
Top-down assessment of disaster resilience: A conceptual framework using coping and adaptive
capacities. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 19, 1-11.
Serra-Llobet, A., Conrad, E., & Schaefer, K. (2016). Governing for integrated water and flood risk
management: Comparing top-down and bottom-up approaches in Spain and
California. Water, 8(10), 445.
Tsamandouras, N., Rostami‐Hodjegan, A., & Aarons, L. (2015). Combining the ‘bottom up’and ‘top
down’approaches in pharmacokinetic modelling: fitting PBPK models to observed clinical
data. British journal of clinical pharmacology, 79(1), 48-55.

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WHO (2019). Strategic response plan for the Ebola virus disease outbreak in the provinces of north
Kivu and Ituri. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/crises/cod/drc-ebola-srp-
v20190410-en.pdf
Wilkinson, A., Parker, M., Martineau, F., & Leach, M. (2017). Engaging ‘communities’:
anthropological insights from the West African Ebola epidemic. Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372(1721), 20160305.
World Health Organization (2019). Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a
Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-
room/detail/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-a-
public-health-emerg