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Towards a 2-Way Communication and Analytics Platform for Emergency Response and Post-Emergency Recovery Efforts in Sierra Leone

Published: 01 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

At the peak of the West African Ebola outbreak in December 2014, the only prospect for containing the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was through behavior change to reduce transmission pathways. However, deeply ingrained beliefs, social systems, and cultural practices, combined with a lack of knowledge of the disease, made containment difficult. IBM Research - Africa, in collaboration with Sierra Leone Open Government Initiative (OGI), set up a call and SMS hotline to engage with citizens and understand issues on the ground using free text responses, which started on 19th Sept 2014 (during the first national lockdown). Localized versions of Centre for Disease Control (CDC) public health messages were broadcast on public radio along with a short question on Ebola, and listeners were encouraged to call or SMS the OGI hotline in reply to the question, or to report the current situation in their locality. Messages were categorized using a basic keyword search approach, based on categories that were determined manually, and the results of the analysis were communicated to the government via OGI. The initial deployment showed the potential of using a 2-way communication platform utilizing natural language responses to provide valuable feedback on behaviors and attitudes during a health emergency. Our presentation will describe the original platform, the outcomes of the analysis performed to date and the current work being undertaken to extend and scale the platform in Sierra Leone.

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  • (2020)Can Phones Build Relationships?Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3378393.3402279(219-230)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020

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  1. Towards a 2-Way Communication and Analytics Platform for Emergency Response and Post-Emergency Recovery Efforts in Sierra Leone

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      DEV '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
      December 2015
      186 pages
      ISBN:9781450334907
      DOI:10.1145/2830629
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 01 December 2015

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      Author Tags

      1. behavior change
      2. ebola
      3. public health
      4. sms

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      ACM DEV '15
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      ACM DEV '15: Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
      December 1 - 2, 2015
      London, United Kingdom

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      DEV '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 13 of 50 submissions, 26%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 52 of 164 submissions, 32%

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      Cited By

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      • (2020)Can Phones Build Relationships?Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3378393.3402279(219-230)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020

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