Exploring the Frontiers of Innovation to Tackle Microbial Threats Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Overcoming Barriers in the Field to Bolster Access and Practical Use of Innovations
4 Overcoming Barriers in the Field to Bolster Access and Practical Use of Innovations
Pages 37-58
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 37... ...
Ribeiro, senior policy advisor, Centre for Infectious Disease Control, the Netherlands, discussed issues related to global data sharing and collaboration and suggested a set of practical tools to enhance the timely sharing of outbreak data. Fadi Makki, founder, Nudge Lebanon and the Consumer Citizen Lab, described the application of insights from behavioral sciences to enhance acceptability and adoption of innovations across diverse social and cultural contexts.
|
From page 38... ...
. Empowering Health Workers and Improving Service Delivery with the Platform Osewe described some of the challenges facing health workers in countries in Africa.
|
From page 39... ...
In addition to improving data quality and verifiability, it can improve the efficiency of health workers because it provides immediate access to a child's immunization status, reducing service delivery times from 30 minutes to less than 5 minutes. He added that ChanjoPlus has also been found to reduce the cost of vaccination by approximately 47 percent, from $7.00 per child to $2.50 per child.
|
From page 40... ...
One Health zoonotic disease surveillance methods are critical for early outbreak detection and response, he maintained. Lessons from the West Africa Ebola Virus Outbreak Although he had worked on other filovirus outbreaks, the West Africa Ebola outbreak was an eye-opening experience for Bird.
|
From page 41... ...
PREDICT EHP was established in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone -- the three countries most severely affected by the West Africa Ebola outbreak -- to conduct an in-depth, high-volume, high-intensity animal sampling to find the elusive reservoir of the Zaire Ebola virus, which was the causative agent of the West Africa outbreak as well as the more recent cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Outcomes of the PREDICT Project Bird said that the project did not find the reservoir of the virus, although a bat infected with what looks like Ebola Zaire was found in Liberia.
|
From page 42... ...
For instance, PREDICT EHP personnel worked hand in hand with the government of Sierra Leone to shape consistent and noninflammatory public messaging after the new viruses were discovered; extensive local public engagement reduced fear and misinformation. The EHP team developed trust as they continuously collected samples in communities for several years and returned to communities to report the discovery of the two viruses, including one that is a high-risk public health pathogen and the other that is of unknown pathogenicity.
|
From page 43... ...
Ribeiro examined issues related to the global practices of sharing microbial and genetic data during outbreaks. She also explored strategies for fostering collaboration and enhancing timely data sharing to tackle microbial threats.
|
From page 44... ...
In February 2019, for example, The Telegraph newspaper reported that samples from Ebola patients in West Africa had been exported without their consent and were being held in secret in laboratories across the world. The article reported that a laboratory was advertising virus samples online for a price quoted as being 170 times the price of gold (Freudenthal, 2019)
|
From page 45... ...
At the political and legal levels, barriers relate to countries' economies, international treaties, government permission, notification processes, ownership agreements, and political willingness among LMICs. Practical Tools to Foster Collaboration and Enhance Sharing Ribeiro suggested several practical tools for fostering collaboration and enhancing data sharing.
|
From page 46... ...
Developing Long-Term Policy and Legal Strategies Ribeiro considered whether these practical tools are sufficient to solve the problems related to collaboration and data sharing to tackle microbial threats. Although these tools can alleviate some of the barriers, addressing the barriers' root causes -- which are usually political and legal in nature -- requires long-term policy and legal strategy recommendations.
|
From page 47... ...
Ribeiro's second suggestion was to coordinate epidemic research and development to organize the response and support rapid product development. She noted how the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa highlighted the importance of coordinated international response.
|
From page 48... ...
ADDRESSING HEALTH CHALLENGES WITH BEHAVIORIAL INSIGHTS AND TOOLS Fadi Makki explored strategies for applying insights from behavioral sciences to enhance acceptability and adoption of innovations across diverse social and cultural contexts. He described how behavioral insights can inform complementary tools to address health challenges using the example of a measles vaccination field experiment conducted in Lebanon.
|
From page 49... ...
Using Behavioral Insights to Address Health Challenges: Example from Lebanon Behavioral insights can be used to address health challenges by exploring the behavior of individual patients and their families. Makki explained that behavioral bottlenecks exist at every level of the behavioral change pathway -- prevention, early detection, and treatment -- and are encountered by every stakeholder in the value change.
|
From page 50... ...
. FIGURE 4-1 Behavioral insights from Nudge Lebanon randomized controlled trials.
|
From page 51... ...
Findings and Lessons Learned from the Measles Vaccination Field Experiment To evaluate the benefits of SHAPE DIFFERENCE behavioral insights, Makki and colleagues developed a test calendar, comprising five nudges and behavioral tools; this calendar was used in 6,160 households across three areas of Lebanon, Makki explained. The calendar was designed to counter the negative influences of peers, the discontent from receiving the same services as refugees, neglect, intention–action gap, forgetfulness, lack of trust in the quality of vaccines at the primary health center, and the lack of awareness that vaccination is free.
|
From page 52... ...
Apply Behavioral Insights to Other Stakeholders to Counter Microbial Threats Makki explored the need to focus on other stakeholders when applying behavioral insights to the area of microbial threats. Focusing exclusively on individual behavior does not account for the behavior of other stakeholders in the value chain, such as industry, policy makers, and health care providers.
|
From page 53... ...
Scaling up the use of behavioral sciences in public policy and health policy through capacity building across all stakeholders in the health care value chain will allow for more opportunity for cocreation, he suggested. Behavioral insights courses are being taught to new civil service graduates; health care providers would benefit from being taught about them as well.
|
From page 54... ...
She remarked that Osewe illustrated the benefits of creating a straightforward platform to support health workers on the ground in LMICs, as well as providing population-wide analytics; he also underscored the challenge of how to foster local-level innovation in the face of competition from innovations developed by larger international organizations that may not be suited to local needs. She highlighted Bird's focus on the local community being a key stakeholder in the uptake of epidemic response activities, as evidenced by the Ebola outbreak, and on the need to understand and adapt to local cultural contexts.
|
From page 55... ...
In a small country like Sierra Leone, it is easier to access the president or the minister of health than in a country like Tanzania, he added. When they found the Bombali virus, it was challenging to convince governments of countries to take the threat seriously and develop a rational response, which he attributed in part to the psychological ramifications of the recent Ebola outbreak.
|
From page 56... ...
He suggested that to err on the side of caution, any new pathogen should be considered a potentially robust human pathogen until proven otherwise. Rafael Obregón asked about how to integrate behavioral tools into disease outbreak response, because many community engagement interventions are setting specific and not easily replicable.
|
From page 57... ...
• Innovative approaches should strive to be transversal, with connec tivity across a range of problem areas; for example, mobile health apps could be designed to manage a range of diseases instead of just one. • Data sharing is complicated by a host of factors -- from national sovereignty to intellectual property to monetization of data -- but these issues must be resolved, because infectious diseases do not respect country boundaries.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.