The World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking experts to serve as Members of a Technical Working Group (TWG) for the development of normative guidance for social and behavioural research in public health emergencies. This “Call for expressions of interest” provides information about the advisory group in question, the expert profiles being sought, the process to express interest, and the selection process.
Background
WHO’s Health Emergency Preparedness, Response and Resilience (HEPR) framework aims to strengthen the global architecture for health emergency management. Community Protection is one of five core subsystems of this framework. Community Protection aims to drive person and community centred health emergency management by putting communities at the centre of decisions aimed at protecting their health and well-being during an emergency. It covers 3 areas, these are:
- Technical approaches such as RCCE and infodemic management.
- Population and environmental interventions.
- Multisectoral action to safeguard against social and economic impacts of emergencies.
Lessons learned from recent health emergencies have emphasized the importance of social, behavioural, and environmental factors when managing health emergencies. Emergency events are complex and interlinked and the evidence that provides understanding of outbreak dynamics must account for these factors to drive community centred solutions.
To strengthen the technical work that enables community-centred outcomes, capacities are needed to engage with a wide range of evidence, including from social and behavioural sciences. This is needed both in terms of using evidence to shape policy and practice decisions, and in terms of producing new evidence in response to emerging need. The prominence given to community protection in HEPR calls for normative guidance to enable community centred practice. Through COVID-19 and responses to other health emergencies, novel approaches to evidence synthesis and production have emerged. Examples include rapid approaches to evidence synthesis, context analysis, rapid research methods, and integrated analytics.
WHO is developing normative guidance on the use and production of evidence that can drive community-centred health emergency management. The guidance aims to advance social and behavioural research that can lead to better outcomes for people affected by public health emergencies. Specifically, it will set out key scientific and ethical considerations for social and behavioural research for community protection in public health emergencies.
Purpose and tasks of the group
The primary purpose of the technical working group is to provide strategic advice and technical expertise to the WHO on the development and scope of normative guidance for use and production of social and behavioural evidence during public health emergencies for community protection. This type of evidence is often, but not always based on research conducted using rapid methods. Experts will participate in meetings and consultations to provide their expert opinions to key tasks related to guidance development and to draft the guidance.
The objectives are to:
- Review and agree the scope of the guidance
- Review and recommend evidence to steer guidance development
- Develop core content for the guidance, including on ethical and best practice standards that ensure the reliability, relevance, timeliness and use of social and behavioural evidence.
Profile of experts
Experts applying to this technical working group should have at least 10 years of relevant professional experience in emergency relevant social and/ or behavioural research, such as field based experience leading or conducting research, rapid methods, rapid evidence synthesis for emergency response, community engagement for emergency relevant research, public health emergency ethics expertise (including, for example, through serving on ethics review boards), use of evidence outputs for emergency-relevant public health decision-making, experience on government advisory groups for public health emergencies.
WHO invites respondents from a range of backgrounds and organisations including but not limited to:
- Professionals working on applied social behavioural research in emergencies.
- Academics and researchers from universities and research institutions specializing in applied social behavioural research for public health emergencies.
- Experts from national public health institutes and agencies.
- Representatives from non-governmental organizations, operational partner agencies, including humanitarian agencies, not-for-profit and United Nations agencies.
- Field-based practitioners with experience in producing and using evidence for public health emergencies.
- Professionals / scientists working across a range of technical areas relevant to community protection in public health emergency response, including risk communication, community engagement, infodemic management, infection prevention and control, community-based health services, One Health, community-based surveillance, population movement and border health, mental health and psychosocial support, and/ or emergency coordination.
The group will be comprised with attention to representation across the different types of organizations and groups outlined above as well as global regions.
How to apply?
Interested applicants should fill in the short survey here, including 1-page CV and a brief statement of motivation explaining their unique contribution to thinking through the issues of social behavioural sciences in public health emergencies.