Joint seminar between LSHTM and MITU exploring the role that rumours and misinformation play in global public health initiatives, looking at vaccine programmes in East and West Africa.
This a joint seminar being held between the Centre for Evaluation at LSHTM and the Mwanza Intervention Trials Unit (MITU).
Rumours and misinformation can undermine public health initiatives, including programmes and evaluation research, by creating barriers to protective health practices while fostering mistrust and uncertainty in communities. Identifying and considering rumours in their historical, social and political contexts is key to supporting meaningful and responsive community dialogue through ongoing community engagement.
This joint seminar with LSHTM and the MITU will provide historical background on rumours as they related to global public health, research and politics and will present several novel methods for rumours data collection, evaluation and community engagement from vaccine studies conducted in East and West Africa. These approaches include community ethnographic approaches, and the development and use of an electronic (e-Rumours) tracking tool by trial field teams in a cluster-randomised trial in rural northwest Tanzania.
Speakers
Dr Susan A. Kelly, PhD MPH
Susan Kelly is an applied social scientist specialising in global health and childhoods. She has more than 20-years鈥 global public health field experience and has lived and worked in East Africa (Uganda and Tanzania) since 2003.
Her work spans programming and research in the fields of HIV care and treatment, human papillomavirus (HPV), vaccine hesitance and violence affecting children. She has a keen interest in the social determinates of health behaviours, including the space between people's daily realities and global discourses and agendas.
Dr Kelly led the Add-Vacc Trial field social sciences research, including the development and piloting of an electronic rumours tracking tool that supported the Add-Vacc Trial vaccination phase and the exploration of the acceptability of single-dose, male HPV vaccination in a rural northwest Tanzania setting.
Shelley Lees is a medical anthropologist, with 25 years of experience in research on public health issues and 15 years experience based in East Africa. Her global health research has expanded with projects in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Guinea, Nigeria, and DRC.
Her current focus is on anthropological perspectives of epidemic response. She also leads on research projects which focus on the prevention of intimate partner violence in Africa, which has public and global health implications. Through this work, she has in-depth knowledge of global health policy and systems.
She brings anthropological expertise to multi-disciplinary public health inventions (including health systems research, clinical trials, or violence prevention interventions), as well exploring the impact of these interventions on people and their communities.
Event notices
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