This event has already happened. Watch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOrUJBvcRlc
Session description:
Podoconiosis, one of the neglected tropical diseases that affects barefoot walkers. It results in swelling of lower legs among patients. On top of its debilitating physical injury, the disease is associated with intense psychological challenges, barriers to education, employment and a range of social consequences including marriage. Ethiopia and Rwanda are identified as podoconiosis endemic countries. A number of interventions have been conducted to increase access to treatment to patients, enhance the economic capacity of affected individuals, improve people’s understanding, health behavior and reduction of associated stigma in the two countries. However, there has been little effort to evaluate the effectiveness of those existing interventions, particularly from a social science perspective. Our research foundation, the social sciences for severely stigmatizing skin diseases (the 5S), among others, aims to evaluate interventions against podoconiosis with the aim of informing optimal strategies to prevent and control the disease. Guided by the literature, we argued that public health interventions should be viewed not as sets of decontextualized components, but as ‘events’ within complex social systems. Such a view helped us consider social interventions together with the system they attempt to change. To this end, we selected the Context, setting and Implementation of Complex Intervention (CICI) framework to evaluate two interventions against podoconiosis being implemented by NGOs in Ethiopia and Rwanda. The CICI framework emphasizes the context, implementation as well as the setting an integrated way to evaluate the success of a given intervention in reaching targeted populations. We employed a mixed method approach to identify contextual, implementation and setting factors that affected the implemented interventions. Our findings helped to identify various factors that either promoted or constrained the implemented interventions in the two countries. Conducting evaluation in this manner provided inputs to currently nonexistent but much-needed complex social interventions for ending the suffering of people with podoconiosis in low- and middle-income countries.
Speakers:
Dr. Kibur Engdawork Melese, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. In 2019, he has been awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship for Social Sciences for Severe Stigmatizing Skin Diseases (5S foundation), a research project jointly implemented by Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) and Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), funded through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Kibur has conducted a number of studies on vulnerable population including people affected by neglected tropical diseases such as podoconiosis, scabies and Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) and leprosy from a social science perspective. So far, he published a handful of articles on health-related issues in reputable peer-reviewed international journals. And he presented his study findings in several international conferences. Kibur has won national and international research grants notably from National Research Foundation of South Africa and National Institute for Health Care Research, (NIHR), UK.
Dr. Richard Kalisa, is senior lecturer at school of public health, University of Rwanda and research fellow on Social Sciences for Severe Stigmatizing Skin Diseases (the 5-S Foundation) collaboration project between the department of global health and infection at Brighton & Sussex Medical School and University of Rwanda.
Prior, he had served as a consultant paediatrician for more than ten years in public and private hospitals in Rwanda and Kenya. He has collaborated with various inter-governmental, non-governmental organization, supported professional associations in the areas of primary health care systems, perinatal audits, pediatric development clinic and community case management. Besides, is a chairperson of scientific committee with Rwanda Pediatric Association. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Safe motherhood and health systems from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
His main interest research areas include perinatal audits, impact evaluation of maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) interventions, quality of care in MNCH and capacity building programs for health workers in resource settings.
About our Knowledge Exchange Cafés:
The Knowledge Exchange Café is a monthly event which will bring together individuals to network and learn from one another’s research and experience. The emphasis in these discussions will be on the social and behavioural sciences as they relate to Neglected Tropical Diseases and how they help reach the WHO 2030 NTD Roadmap goals. Each Knowledge Exchange Café will include time for networking and conversation to facilitate interaction amongst attendees.
About iCHORDS:
iCHORDS (Improving Community Health Outcomes through Research, Dialogue and Systems Strengthening) Community of Practice is a platform for communication, collaboration and knowledge exchange within social and behavioural science research disciplines to address implementation gaps and current issues facing Neglected Tropical Disease programs.
Register as a member here: https://ichords.org/join-community/
