Blog

Jul 26, 2023

Relationship between household member vaccine acceptance and individual vaccine acceptance among women in rural Liberia

Despite the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, vaccination uptake remains low in Liberia. Social norms, and in particular an individual’s family preferences can have a strong normative influence on health behavior. However, few studies across the globe have explored how behavioral intent about COVID-19 vaccination among household members affects individual vaccination acceptance, particularly in rural, resource-limited settings. We respond to this gap in knowledge by analyzing data from a household survey of women in rural Liberia with the goal of understanding how household COVID-19 beliefs and vaccine behavioral intent correlated with those of individual household members.

Apr 26, 2023

Measuring Health System Responsiveness in a national community health worker primary care program in rural Liberia

As many low- and middle-income countries scale up community health worker (CHW) programs to achieve universal health coverage, ensuring quality as well as access is critical. Health system responsiveness (HSR) is a core domain of quality patient-centered care, but has not been widely measured in CHW-delivered care. We report results from a household survey measuring HSR and health systems quality of CHW-delivered care in two Liberian counties where the national CHW program for communities five kilometers or more from a health center has been implemented.

We found that HSR was associated with important patient-reported health system quality outcomes, including satisfaction, trust, and confidence in the CHA. Measuring patients’ experience and outcomes of care is important to complement more common measures of technical quality for CHW-delivered care to ensure that this domain of quality is central to community health program design and delivery.

Apr 12, 2023

The Use of Open-Source Online Course Content for Training in Public Health Emergencies: Mixed Methods Case Study of a COVID-19 Course Series for Health Professionals

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic generated an urgent need for credible and actionable information to guide public health responses. The massive open-source online course (MOOC) format may be a valuable path for disseminating timely and widely accessible training for health professionals during public health crises; however, the reach and effectiveness of health worker–directed online courses during the pandemic remain largely unexplored.

This study investigated the use of an open-source online course series designed to provide critical COVID-19 knowledge to frontline health workers and public health professionals globally. It examined global course enrollment patterns (N=2185) and performed in-depth interviews with a purposive subsample of health professionals enrolled in the course series (N=12) to investigate the sharing of online content in pandemic responses. The analysis revealed that the online course content helped fill a critical gap in trustworthy COVID-19 information for pandemic responses and was shared through health worker professional and personal networks. This study illustrates that health professional networks can facilitate the sharing of online open-source health education content; however, to fully leverage potential benefits, additional support is required to facilitate the adaptation of course content to more effectively reach communities globally.