My Hero is You, How Kids can Fight COVID-19!

This is a new story book that aims to help children understand and come to terms with COVID-19 has been produced by a collaboration of more than 50 organizations working in the humanitarian sector, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Save the Children.

With the help of a fantasy creature, Ario, “My Hero is You, How kids can fight COVID-19!” explains how children can protect themselves, their families and friends from coronavirus and how to manage difficult emotions when confronted with a new and rapidly changing reality.

The book – aimed primarily at children aged 6-11 years old – is a project of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, a unique collaboration of United Nations agencies, national and international nongovernmental organizations and international agencies providing mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings.

During the early stages of the project, more than 1700 children, parents, caregivers and teachers from around the world shared how they were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The input was invaluable to script writer and illustrator Helen Patuck and the project team in making sure that the story and its messages resonated with children from different backgrounds and continents.

In order to reach as many children as possible, the book will be widely translated, with six language versions released today and more than 30 others in the pipeline. It is being released as both an online product and audio book.

Source: WHO, UNICEF, IFRC, UNHCR

Date of Publication: September 30, 2021

WHO Tool for Behavioural Insights on COVID-19

This is a tool for rapid, flexible and cost-effective monitoring of public knowledge, risk perceptions, behaviours and trust is now available to countries in the WHO European Region to make their COVID-19-related response relevant and actionable.

The outbreak is placing an overwhelming burden on health systems and authorities to respond with effective and appropriate interventions, policies and messages. One of the most critical elements of reducing virus transmission is public behaviour.

For crisis response measures to affect public behaviours, they need to be perceived as consistent, competent, fair, objective, empathetic or sincere. They also need to be easily understood and communicated through trusted people and accessible channels.

To succeed with this, it is critical to gain an understanding of issues such as:

  • trust in health authorities, recommendations and information;
  • risk perceptions;
  • acceptance of recommended behaviours;
  • knowledge;
  • barriers/drivers to recommended behaviours;
  • misperceptions; and
  • stigma.

The newly established Insights Unit at WHO/Europe has developed a tool which:

  • is evidence-based;
  • can be rapidly applied;
  • can be regularly applied;
  • is simple and flexible to adjust to the changing situation; and
  • is low cost and cost effective.

Last modified: July 21, 2020

Language: English, French, German, Russian

RESOURCES

Tools

Examples

    COVID-Ready Communication Playbook for Health Professionals

    The team at VitalTalk crowdsourced this playbook to provide some practical advice to health care professionals on how to talk to their patients about some difficult topics related to COVID-19.

    Building on their experience studying and teaching communication they’ve drawn on their networks to crowdsource the challenges and match them with advice from some of the best clinicians they know.

    Last modified: June 18, 2020

    Language: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Urdu, Vietnamese

    RESOURCES

    Tools

    Examples

      COVideo19 Student-Led Initiative

      COVideo19 is an initiative led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health students aimed at providing science-based, social media friendly information on COVID-19 in multiple languages. The students are part of the Digital Health Society, the student arm of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative.

      The video series, aimed at young, connected audiences around the globe, challenges viewers to become “public health warriors” and combines scientific knowledge about COVID-19 with instructions on how to help stop its spread. In addition to the introductory video—now available in 20 languages and counting—COVideo19 features brief Q&As in multiple languages that address common myths, misconceptions, and concerns sourced from students’ home communities, ranging from the effects of COVID-19 on mental health to the seasonality of the coronavirus. The videos are available on the School’s playlist.

      Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

      Date of Publication: May 17, 2020