Operational Guide for Engaging Communities in Contact Tracing

"Effectively integrating community engagement principles and processes into contact tracing strategies and implementation will build and promote trust for this critical operational approach ultimately reducing transmission of COVID-19 and saving lives."

Evidence indicates that community trust - particularly among marginalised people - is critical for contact tracing to be successful. Contact tracing is the identification, assessment, management, and monitoring of persons who may have come into close contact with a person infected with an infectious disease such as COVID-19. This guidance articulates best practice principles for community engagement and how they can be operationalised as part of any community-centred contact tracing strategy. The material provided can stand on its own or be used to complement other documents that support strategies, implementation plans, or training and capacity building modules.

Consistent with the Social Ecological Model (SEM), "social and community factors such as policies and norms influence the success of outbreak control measures. Contact tracing is one such control activity..." Thus, the guidance is based on the understanding that implementing contact tracing successfully requires close and consistent engagement with local communities at all stages of the process - e.g., having community members as part of contact tracing teams and fostering community involvement in the planning, selection, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of contact tracing methodologies, broader sensitisation strategies, and communication channels.

The guide includes:

• Key principles for engaging communities:
  1. Understand the community context.
  2. Build trust.
  3. Ensure and maintain community buy-in.
  4. Work through community-based solutions.
  5. Generate a community workforce.
  6. Commit to honest and inclusive two-way communication.
  7. Listen, analyse, and respond to feedback.
  8. Consider the use of contact tracing technology.
  9. Do not criminalise actions.
  10. Discourage and address stigma, discrimination, and rumours.
  11. Coordinate with all response actors.
  Click here to view a video on the key principles.
• Standard operating procedures to support implementation of principles
• Community engagement indictors to measure impact and success (detailed indicator bank - see Annex A)
• Adapted SEM to help identify barriers and opportunities at all levels to support contact tracing
• Vetted resource guide for community-centred COVID-19 contact tracing

This document was developed by the Ad-Hoc Working Group for Community Engagement in Contact Tracing in consultation and collaboration with the Collective Service for Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE), a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), and key stakeholders from the public health, humanitarian, and development sectors.

Editor's note: On April 13 2021, the Ad-Hoc Working Group for Community Engagement in Contact Tracing and the Collective Service hosted a webinar featuring a number of case studies that articulate how successful implementation of community engagement principles increases the impact and effectiveness of contact tracing. See the video, below, to access the recording.