Welcome to the 21st issue of the COVID-19 Hygiene Hub news bulletin.
In this issue, we highlight our webinar recordings and reflect on key events the Hygiene Hub team attended over the past month - the Emergency Environmental Health Forum, the annual Global WASH Cluster meeting and this year's Global Handwashing Partnership Think Tank. We also draw your attention to BBC Media Action’s recently updated Handbook for Media which provides useful guidance on COVID-19 programming to media and communications professionals.
If you have a question for the Hygiene Hub, need technical support or would like to share your project, get in touch with us at support@hygienehub.info.
Webinars and events
In last month’s news bulletin, we highlighted some of the over 40 webinars and workshops the Hygiene Hub has co-hosted and contributed to since our launch. We have reached over 6,000 participants with these sessions, and you can find recordings of many of them under Webinars in the Resources section of our website.
In our webinar section, you will also find a recent video recording of the Hygiene Hub’s contribution to this year’s Emergency Environmental Health Forum where our technical advisors from Emory University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine discuss their research into the experiences of humanitarians involved in the design and delivery of hygiene programmes during the pandemic.
The Hygiene Hub team also joined discussions at the annual Global WASH Cluster satellite meeting about user-centred community engagement in WASH and the opportunities the pandemic has created for hygiene. Key take-home messages to us were that engaging and listening to communities are crucial elements of successful WASH programming, and that actors involved in hygiene promotion and behaviour change need to build on the unprecedented momentum for the hygiene sector and think beyond the pandemic now.
Our technical advisors joined the Global Handwashing Partnership Think Tank. The event gathered hand hygiene experts from multiple sectors to discuss how we can maintain hand hygiene habits and prioritization beyond COVID-19.
COVID-19 handbook for media
The Handbook for Media: The coronavirus and COVID-19 was first put together in May last year by our colleagues from the international charity BBC Media Action to help media support their audiences in managing the challenges of the pandemic and tackling the ‘infodemic’. The English language version of the handbook has now been brought up-to-date and is currently being translated into several other languages.
The handbook is a great resource for media and communications professionals. It provides useful background on COVID-19 and guidance on a variety of aspects ranging from tips for effective communication and choosing the right programme contributors and interview questions, to content ideas, production safety and strategies to address false and misleading information.
Areas of technical support
The Hygiene Hub not only provides rapid support to response actors through the ‘get technical advice’ feature on our website, but we also offer more involved tailored technical assistance to response actors at the local, national and global level.
For example, the Hygiene Hub is currently engaging with the Centre for Water, Sanitation, Health, and Appropriate Technology Development (WASHTED) in Malawi to support their hand hygiene and behaviour change work in schools within Chikwawa District, and the Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) - another technical partner of the Hygiene Hub - is working with the Lusaka Water Supply & Sanitation Company and the World Bank to understand the effects of COVID-19 on the uptake of sanitation services.
On the recently expanded technical support section of the Hygiene Hub website you will find more examples of this type of in-depth assistance.
Technical resources and learning briefs
Our technical resources - now a set of almost 200 articles - are designed to support you in your COVID-19 response by equipping you with relevant evidence and guidance. We continue to add to the resource collection and update the resources as new evidence becomes available.
All our technical resources are available in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. Please email us at support@hygienehub.info if you have requests or ideas for future resources.
In addition to bringing together the latest evidence in our technical resources, we have also gathered best practice and lessons-learnt during the pandemic in our learning briefs on hand hygiene promotion and disability and inclusion. Our next learning brief will share lessons for monitoring and evaluation that have emerged from global COVID-19 response programming.
Case studies on COVID-19 response programmes
Our collection of case studies brings together real-world examples of how policy, advocacy and programme implementation have adapted to the challenges of the pandemic.
Recent additions to the collection have included:
Adapting Indonesia’s National Water Supply and Sanitation Project to meet the needs of the COVID-19 pandemic: In this case study, colleagues at the World Bank reflect on how a national-level programme to improve access to sustainable water supply and sanitation services across Indonesia was adapted during the pandemic and how the programme engaged with village authorities.
Diffusing puppet edutainment programmes on mass media to inform children about COVID-19: In this case study from Kenya, Amref Health Africa describe the development and roll-out of a puppetry programme for use in mass media that is aimed at supporting COVID-19 prevention behaviours in children and their caregivers
Tracking and responding to community perceptions about the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe: In this case study, Action Contre la Faim reflect on their experience with the Community Perception Tracker in Zimbabwe to adapt ongoing programmes to increase their impact.
‘U Afya’: empowering women through mobile technology to combat COVID-19 in Kenya: This case study explores how Every1Mobile adapted content for their ‘U Afya’ platform to provide women with tools to encourage COVID-19 prevention behaviour in particular among and for the most vulnerable community members.
Why not share your own experience with the sector?
If you would like to share your work and contribute to our collection of case studies, please contact claire.collin@lshtm.ac.uk. We are particularly keen to hear about programmes that incorporate advocacy, policy or sustainability components.
Social media channels
Over the past year, we have reached over 2.9 million people through our social media channels.
Get your updates from the Hygiene Hub through these channels too by following us on Twitter @hygiene_hub, Facebook @covid19hygienehub and LinkedIn - this will also help us increase our reach even further!