Lecture 7- Community Engagement and communication regarding public health Flashcards
What is community engagement
Process of enabling conversations and building relationships between people who have a role or interest in an issue in their community
What are 3 barriers to increasing levels of community participation
Limited time, restricted budgets for specific activities, differing social status between stakeholders
What are effective CE approaches
Inclusive (pro and anti), variety methods of engagement, participatory planning (what the focus is), communication
Costs of Community engagement
Time consuming and quality of services
Benefits of CE
Sustainability, resilience, impact , effectiveness, financial, welfare, influencers
Sustainability and CE
Can make communities feel responsible for initiatives and justified in demanding government action, avoiding dependency on external agencies and mobilizing resources, such as local veterinary capacity
Resilience CE
Helps the community become practiced at evaluating their impact and evolving their intervention in response to learning
Impact CE
Can improve perceived and actual impact on an intervention by ensuring focus on the problems of greatest concern to the community and building their motivation and enthusiasm to see those problems solved
Effectiveness CE
Improve effectiveness of intervention because communities understand their local dynamics and human behavior relating to issues better than outsiders
Financial CE
CE can reduce costs by encouraging and enabling full community action and support; full community action will only occur with full participation; the more efforts made to engage people, the more action will occur in response
Welfare CE
CE can positively impact the lifetime experience and welfare of animals because communities are present in the long term, as opposed to the temporary interventions of outside agencies
Influencers CE
In many communities, people are already playing an important but informal role in solving issues, harnessing the influence to support interventions can be very effective, while excluding them may lead to conflicting messages for community
different levels of community participation
Non-participation/passive, co-option, compliance and informing, consultation, cooperation, co-learning
Non-participation/passive
No members of community are aware or involved.
Co-option
Token representatives chosen but have no real input or power
Compliance and informing
Tasks assigned with incentives, with outsiders deciding the agenda and directing the process
Consultation
Local opinions are sought, with outsides analyzing and deciding on a course of action
Cooperation
Local people work together with outsiders to determine priorities, with the responsibility for directing the process remaining with outsiders
Co-learning
Local people and outsiders share their knowledge to create a new understanding and work together to form action plans with outsider facilitation or local people represent several stakeholders set their own agenda and mobilize to carry it out in the absence of outside initiators or facilitators
What is the following level of participation in this example: municipal vet office informs the ward representative that they will be arriving on a particular day to provide two hours of rabies vaccination for dogs brought to the ward office by their owners; ward representative must advertise that this service will be available to the local dog owners
Co-option
What is the following level of participation in this example: NGO staff create and distribute flyers promoting good dog care at markets, bus stops and other places in community where people are gathered
Non-participation/passive
What level of participation is the following example: a local NGO pays a facilitator to run focus groups with local dog owners to learn why they think some dogs are abandoned. The facilitator synthesizes the focus group transcripts, which are used by the NGO to select the services they will provide through their DPM intervention
Consultation
NGO offers to sterilize and vaccinate community dogs, but community members will need to help catch and handle the dogs as well as provide regular food, water, and monitoring following surgery
Compliance and informing
What is the following level of participation: local vet association notes an increase in dog rabies cases and asks NGO to help them design a public relations campaign to increase the uptake of annual rabies vaccination at veterinary clinics
Cooperation
What is the following level of participation: a small group of concerned citizens ask for support from the newly elected mayor to undertake a new more humane DPM intervention they are provided with municipal funding and together with an animal welfare officer from the local municipality office, initiate formation of multi-stakeholder group to plan the new DPM intervention. The Animal welfare officer mentors the group through the process, resulting in a locally grown DPM intervention with municipal support and funding
Co-learning
What is a workshop
Single, short educational program designed to teach or introduce practical skills, techniques or ideas that participants can then use in their own work or daily lives
What are the three phases of planning a workshop
Planning, preparation, implementation
What is the best workshop size
8-12 people
What is the international companion animal management coalition (ICAM)
Comprised of representatives from multiple international animal welfare organizations, formed to support development and use of humane and effective companion animal population management worldwide.
What is ICAM’s philosophy
Believes that legal and fiscal responsibility for animal population management properly resides with local and central government. NGO’s should not be encouraged to seek to take on authority’s overall responsibility for animal population management, but NGO;s are important in guiding and supporting the governments strategy
What is Dog population management (DPM)
Managing dog population by focusing on root causes to identify source of dogs that are linked to problems not just reactively going after roaming dog population
Goal is an improvement in dog welfare alongside benefits for public and environmental health
What is dog population dynamics
Different subpopulations of dogs that interact to form the whole dog population. Considers the processes of births, deaths, and reproduction, considers how individual dogs move from one population to the next
Humane and ethical principle of DPM
Should be human and ethical, minimizing harm and maximizing benefit for dogs and the human communities, can’t include the indiscriminate killing of dogs, killing roaming dogs or use killing as sole measure of population management. Inhumane methods of killing is ineffective as it focuses only on current roaming population not where they came from
Adapted to local dog population dynamics, principles of DPM
DPM design should be appropriate to local conditions
Sustained and adaptive principle of DPM
Should be considered a permanent community service, integrated into mainstream society and dog owners carry out most management activities.
Evidence based design, monitoring and evaluation- principle of DPM
Use evidence base when designing, monitoring and evaluating DPM interventions
Focus on root causes- principle of DPM
DPM will have limited effect if it only addresses those dogs currently experiencing or linked to problems and not their sources. Ex: only catching and killing unowned dogs instead of tackling motivations for original abandonment
Central role of human behavior- principle of DPM
Take time to engage with people to understand their reality and work with them to ensure they can practice the right DPM behaviors
What are some example methods for dog population assessment
Key informant interviews, focus groups, household questionnaire, street subvert, holding facility/rehoming records, secondary sources of information, observation of roaming dogs
What are some problems linked to dogs
Risk to public health, public perception (fear or nuisance), roaming dog density, negative impacts on wildlife, negative impacts on livestock
What are the 4 DPM foundations
- Legislation and enforcement
- Task force
- Advocacy
- Community engagement
Legislation and enforcement
Legislation occurs at 2 levels: central/federal/national- provides framework for DPM and secondary/bylaw legislation which details its implementation
Without enforcement, legislation is ineffective
Task force
Effective and sustained DPM requires sustained leadership from a task force to drive the intervention in the long term, must include multiple stakeholders
Advocacy
Coordinated set of activities to influence the policy and practice of managing dogs, build case for DPM, built on research
Community engagement in DPM
Enable conversations and build relationships between people who have a role or interest improving the dog situation in their community. Collaborate as community to assess dog population and implement locally suitable and sustainable DPM
What are the 4 fundamental services that are critical to all effective DPM systems
- Promoting responsible behavior
- Strengthening DPM professional capacity
- Reproduction control
- Veterinary care
Promoting responsible behavior
People’s capability and motivation for targeted responsible and compassionate behavior towards dogs is increased, social pressure and support is increased, people recognize role and value of DPM
Strengthening DPM professional capacity
Many professionals lack training, mentoring and support. Provide support and training- DPM services are accessible, good quality, and meet demand, professional feel equipped, professionals are respected by public
Reproduction control
Prevent unwanted litters, leading to balance of supply and demand
Sterilization may briefly increase population sizes as sterilized dogs live longer
Veterinary care
Basic preventative care like vaccines and deworming to protect health and welfare of dogs and reduce risk of zoonotic disease. If unable to treat or cure illness euthanasia should be considered to end suffering
Context dependent services
Formal education to children- safety around dogs
Holding facilities and rehoming-address abandonment, identification and registration, control of commercial breeding and sale, managing access to resources
What are eight main potential impacts to measure regarding DPM
- Improve dog welfare
- Improve care provided to dogs
- Reduce dog density/stabilize turnover
- Reduce risk to public health
- Improve public perception
- Improve rehoming center performance
- Reduce negative impacts of dogs on wildlife
- Reduce negative impacts of dogs on livestock
what is culling
Reducing animal population by selective slaughter
Why is removal of animals not better than DPM
Removal even by non-lethal means requires significant ongoing effort and can dilute the effects of other interventions, such as rabies vaccination campaigns
What is carrying capacity
Species average population size in a particular habitat
How is species population size limited
Environmental factors like food, shelter, water, and mates
What is contest competition
The strong outcompete the weak for resources
What is scramble competition
Everyone accesses the resource roughly equally
Unmanaged populations are typically maintained by excess ____
Death of young animals
How can you increase health of population and decrease risk to public health if animal density is acceptable
Sterilizing and vaccinating existing population
Population is maintained in slow growth phase since at capacity
If animal density is not acceptable you will need to do ____ and decrease carrying capacity
You will need to vaccinate and sterilize and remove resources such as uncovered garbages containers
Must be maintained or population will go into fast growthq
