Youth and Governance Kenya
YouthKe Covid-19 Awareness, Wellbeing and Protection of Youth Living with Disabilities (AWPYWD)
Location: Kenya (Nairobi, Nakuru, Narok)
COVID-19 2020 SURVEY
To inform the Taskforce strategy, the Youth and Governance Kenya COVID-19 study team utilizes rapid phone-based surveys to collection information on the awareness, wellbeing and protection of youth living with disabilities among a sampled number of disable youth in Narok town, Nakuru and Nairobi slums. The complete survey will be conducted every 2-3 weeks. The baseline survey was conducted March 24-26 with a follow up survey which was conducted April 1-3. Findings on awareness of COVID-19 symptoms, perceived risk, awareness of and ability to carry out preventive behaviors, misconceptions, and fears will inform Taskforce interventions. In subsequent rounds, behavior change messages will be randomly assigned to measure effectiveness, or if randomization is not feasible, survey questions on exposure and response to government campaigns will be evaluated using causal inference approaches.
Background
By March 2020, the WHO detected community transmission in some African countries (including Kenya) and the risk to spreading coronavirus is due in large part to deep challenges in practicing social distancing and frequent hand washing in settings of high population density and lack of running water, as well as the non-specific symptoms of COVID-19 that make it difficult to differentiate from endemic illnesses such as malaria and influenza.
The national and county governments have launched its COVID-19 Taskforce to implement initial prevention and mitigation measures. The Taskforce is collaborating with the Youth and Governance Kenya to rapidly gather information on the awareness, protection and wellbeing of youth living with disabilities in urban slums in Nairobi and towns of Narok and Nakuru in a series of phone-based surveys. This will inform the development and planning of behavior change campaigns, COVID-19 tracking, and other interventions as needed throughout the pandemic.
Research Questions
Youthke awareness, wellbeing and protections (AWP) surveys among at-risk youth living with disability are useful to inform prevention, control and mitigation measures during epidemics. This will yield critical information to guide response and recovery efforts, health education, and social mobilization. AWPYWD surveys identify the prevalence of misconceptions about COVID-19 transmission and prevention, the need to prevent stigmatization of COVID-19 survivors, and to foster safer case management. We are undertaking a series of AWPYWD surveys among people living in Nairobi urban slums, Narok and Nakuru towns to answer the following questions:
How far is the awareness of the outbreak of COVID-19 amongst youth living with disabilities? How shall this be shared efficiently and effectively?
What could be the key challenges facing the youth living with disability from accessing sanitizers, soaps, and water to combat the transmission?
What could be the expected mechanisms and approaches to be adopted in order to solve these problems for further COVID-19 prevention?
What should the county governments do to effectively connect directly with the youth living with disability in slums in order for the latter to access the services?
Research Design
In order to inform the county governments COVID-19 Taskforce strategy, this study will deploy rapid phone-based AWPYD surveys of households sampled from participants from the Youth and Governance Kenya existing prospective cohort studies across 3 towns. The survey will be conducted every 2-3 weeks, beginning in Mid May 2020. Each survey will last 20-30 minutes and be conducted on the phone with county’s-based research assistants. Baseline findings on awareness of COVID-19 symptoms, perceived risk, awareness of and ability to carry out preventive behaviors, misconceptions, and fears will inform Taskforce interventions.
Target population
Youthke target population is households with youth living with disabilities in Nairobi, Narok and Nakuru. These 3 study sites are representative of the diversity of households with at least one youth living with disability of any kind. Although this may be found hard to conduct survey based on households, our team shall group households into villages where a village should have at least 10 disable in order to be eligible for this exercise.
Survey instrument
The Youthke data collection will ask some of the same questions by phone, messages and whatsapp to see how awareness, wellbeing and protection of youth living with disabilities change over time, and may include additional modules related to exposure to behavior change messaging and responses to these campaigns.
Limitations
Fast COVID-19 transmission makes it impossible to collect data or conduct behavior change campaigns in person, to protect health workers and field-based staff. Behavior change messages will have to rely on channels that do not require face-to-face interaction, such as SMS/WhatsApp, phone calls, radio, television, and social media.
Progress to date
Youthke baseline survey was conducted March 24-26 and included individuals (52% female and 48% male) evenly distributed across the 3 towns locations. Baseline findings were written into a short brief, and shall be compiled to be presented to the county government’s ministry of health and the COVID-19 Taskforce, and written into a manuscript to be submitted for peer-reviewed publication.
Partnership with county governments
The county governments have created a COVID-19 Response Taskforce, and Youth and Governance Kenya has been approached as an evidence partner to gather critical information to support prevention and mitigation policies and interventions. We will continue to work with the COVID-19 Response Taskforce to ensure our work is accessible and useful to their planning.
Support
YouthKe Awareness, Wellbeing and Protection for Youth with Disability requests for financial support to further and complete the research survey, share information to the County Government Taskforce Team on covid-19 solutions. Additionally, if successful an aid to humanitarian needs in form of food supply, and in partnership with the county governments to the identified spots with youth with disabilities in the 3 towns.
The estimate budget for the project is approximated to 7,000 Euros.
Other needs: Volunteers
See more:
Facebook page: Youth and Governance Kenya
Website: www.youthgovernanceke.org
For more information contact covid19@unmgcy.org