Community Engagement and Mobilization Strategy for Ebola Response

This report provides a comprehensive community engagement and mobilization strategy for managing Ebola outbreaks, emphasizing a bottom-up approach. It highlights the importance of social mobilization, capacity building, and sustained community engagement to build trust and confidence in outbreak control mechanisms. The strategy includes key domains such as decentralization of engagement, community consultation, active participation, and effective organization through awareness campaigns and specialized teams. It also emphasizes capacity building for healthcare professionals, psychosocial support for victims, and empowerment of communities through local-level action planning and access to essential services. The report further explores behavioral theories to enhance emergency response preparedness and concludes with the importance of case detection, contact tracing, and effective communication strategies involving influential leaders and mass media.

Running head: COMMUNITY AND HEALTH
COMMUNITY AND HEALTH
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Introduction
Ebola virus is a lethal disease in humans, which is transmitted to the human beings from
the wild animals and spread to populations easily through human to human transmission
(WHO., 2018). Ebola outbreak has affected some of the world’s most susceptible communities
that are still recovering from the trauma of the civil war and the Ebola outbreak had worsened
the situation. However, community engagement and social mobilization plays an important
role in dealing with the Ebola response. This paper puts forward a bottom up approach for
engaging the communities in the managing the Ebola outbreak.
Community engagement and mobilization strategy for an Ebola outbreak
A bottom up approach
The goal for the emergency response plan is will be to reduce the mortality and
morbidity relate to the Ebola outbreak. The objectives for the response plan is to detect all the
cases of the Ebola virus disease in the equatorial province, to trace an follow all the contacts,
reduce the risk of the transmission of EVD in the community, promotion of collective practices
through communication of the risks, social mobilization and engagement with the community
to prevent the spread of the EVD in the equatorial province (WHO., 2018). A bottom up
approach will be used in the community engagement and the mobilization strategy that
involves achieving the goal by targeting strategies from the grass root level that is the
community.
Social mobilization, building the capacities of the affected individuals in the affected
communities for managing and preventing Ebola is important to increase the trust and the
confidence in the outbreak control mechanism and to break the transmission of the virus
(Gillespie et al., 2016). The bottom up approach involves that the stakeholders should listen to
the communities and should responds to their needs.

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Engagement
A sustained engagement and communication within the community groups at an active
level helps in the building of the trust and confidence in the response efforts And encourages
the participation of the community and action for the Ebola response (Gillespie et al., 2016)
The important domains for the community engagement are – 1) Strategy and
decentralization of the engagement of the community, funding for the community engagement,
provision of the supplies for the community engagement like mobile pones, airtime credits ,
printings, posters , radio announcement and the shows (Gostin, Lucey & Phelan, 2014). It is
necessary to map the villages and the communities in the affected areas.
Consultation
Consultation of with the community members for an Ebola emergency response is
needed before developing any policies and to educate them about the importance of the
policies. The government should consult with the representatives of the community to
understand the needs of the common people and to find out the best possible ways to reach the
common people (Gostin, Lucey & Phelan, 2014). It should be noted that the community
engagement in the rural areas should be different from the urban areas. Both interpersonal
approaches and mass media should be used as the communication approaches. Mass media can
work well in the rural areas (Dufty, 2012).
Participation
It is then essential to develop a solid leadership approach at different levels with the
authorities for coordinating the partner. A clear leadership and strong protocols are required to
be made starting from how to enter the communities to micro mapping of the communities, to
accurate collection of data and the beyond. Strategic partnership has to be made for achieving

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the long term and short term goals. According to Li et al., (2016) collaborative partnership with
the religious leader, journalists, religious leader, radio stations can help in engaging within the
community. According to Laverack and Manoncourt, (2016), the rural communities in Libya
believe much in the spiritual as well as the traditional leaders such that they believe in
everything that the spiritual leaders says. A knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) survey is
needed to communicate with the community members. Workshops can be conducted involving
the primary health workers, voluntary members, influential person and representatives of the
normal public to sort out the needs and the grievances of the common people.
Organization
Effective community engagement can be facilitated by organizing awareness campaigns,
special survey groups for specific provinces, dignified burial teams, organizing infection
control measures in schools and primary care settings.
Capacity building
It is necessary to develop the capacity of the health care professionals in the case
management, IPC and epidemiological surveillance. It is necessary to train the health care
providers in the epidemiological supervision of the EVD. The health care providers should also
be trained to provide psychosocial care to the EVD victims (Gamboa-Maldonado et al., 2013).
The nurses from the health centers should be coached about the early signs, following up with
the staffs in the integrated disease surveillance and response. The NGOs should operate at the
grass root level with the local communities and the organization as partners and participation
in the developmental planning (Gamboa-Maldonado et al., 2013). .

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Actions
The bottom up key actions that has to be followed are the deployment of the
epidemiologist at the provincial, national and the health zone levels, an evaluation of the health
structures, setting up of an information management system and for ensuring a timely sharing
of the epidemiological data for guiding the multispectral operation response. Actions should
also involve the deploying of at least one mobile laboratory, for the rapid screening of the of
the cases, including acquiring the protective equipment, sampling, transportation of the
samples from the fields to the laboratories, provision of a logistical and a communication
support system to the surveillance team (like equipping the team with supplies like
communications tools and phone money (Marais et al., 2016. Other actions involves proper
ambulance services. Health campaigns can be leaded by the community leaders to spread
awareness among the masses. A widespread communication education is needed for the
community social mobilisers. The trainees are accountable to distribute the message of
awareness to the community members by face to face communicating with them or by the
distribution of the posters and the brochures (Gillespie et al., 2016). Health package containing
some posters, brochures, soap, hand sanitizer, one thermometer and a T-shirt EVD messages.
Another component of the response strategy is the provision of psychosocial assistance
to the families as the EVD survivor are often stigmatized and hence finds it difficult to resume
back to the normal life style.
Empowerment
Apart from providing the communities with basic services and livelihood opportunities,
people should be taught to be resilient and display cohesiveness during a community crisis.
These involves, local –level action planning workshops, school safety programs, free health
checkups, financial accessibility to health care and small media workshops (Dufty, 2012).

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Political leaders and the religious leaders can play a great role in empowering the community
members.
Behavioral Theories towards emergency responses
Preparedness for an emergency response against Ebola focusses on the changing of the
human behavior and to reduce the risk of the people and increase their ability to cope up with
the consequences of the hazards. In order to take the initiative several behavioral theories have
been used before. In Order to develop the strategies, it is required to take in consideration,
certain health related behavior theories (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015). The socio-ecological
model can be used to understand and responds to the community, individual and political
dynamics driving the EVD. A theory of planned behavior can be designed for assisting the
implementers of the program that effectively affects a particular behavior. It is especially
intended for the ones designing the interventions targeting the health enhancing behaviors such
as self-check-ups, voluntary screening and adherence to the medical safety guidelines related
to Ebola outbreak (Ejeta, Ardalan & Paton, 2015). According to this theory, people are more;
likely to have healthy behaviors if only they have positive attitude towards the health behavior
and they believe that the subjective norms are favorable to those behaviors (Montano &
Kasprzyk, 2015). Hence it is necessary for the implementers to study the different beliefs,
controlling the subjective norms and the intention to perform a particular behavior. Behavior
assessment should be made before conducting the other bottom up approaches.
Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that proper case detection, contact tracing, investigation,
proper mapping of the villages in the affected area, reporting, involving the influential leaders,

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training the health service providers for the capacity building, arrangement of proper
equipment, proper communication of the awareness among the common people, involving
mass media in the communication , can be helpful in case of an emergency response against
Ebola virus disease. Moreover a humanitarian approach is required for understanding the needs
and the capacities of the people of the community struck by EVD.

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