Navigating and Reimagining Community Engagement amidst COVID-19

Community engagement is a critical manifestation of a humanising approach on how to respond to various psychosocial and structural violence challenges in the context of a pandemic. Community engagement within the context of the current global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) requires creative and innovative responses. Institutions have had to reconfigure their community engagement due to restrictive measures instituted by governments to curb the spread of the virus. This paper aims to reflect on the conversations and experiences of community activist researchers in implementing creative ways of engagement to address pertinent psychosocial and structural violence issues affecting communities during COVID-19. Through a qualitative reflexive approach, we identified the following themes: (1) Challenges in community-engaged research during a pandemic; (2) Structural violence and psychosocial issues; and (3) Innovative opportunities to bridge gaps and confront community realities. The pandemic has produced challenges but has also allowed for opportunities to reimagine community engagement. It has created opportunities and novel ways of collaborating with multisectoral social actors to address the psychosocial challenges during the pandemic and to remain actively engaged with communities

Community asset mapping as an action research strategy for developing an interpersonal violence prevention programme in South Africa

The aim of this article was to report and critically reflect on community asset mapping processes used to develop a contextually valid interpersonal violence prevention pro gramme in South Africa to promote positive forms of masculinity, safety and peace. This study was informed by a critical public health framework, and was guided by the values and principles of community-based participatory action research. The research and action methods used included community asset mapping and action planning workshops, workshop evaluation questionnaires and reflexive researcher diary notes. Data were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results of this study dem onstrated that the community asset mapping process provides reflexive and embedded spaces for academic and community participants to interactively engage and critically discuss issues which resonate with community concerns, and collectively find possible solutions to challenges identified. A participatory and asset-based approach holds prom ise for developing interventions that are appropriate and relevant to local challengInstitute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Complex, Multi-component, Dynamic, Community Based Injury Prevention Interventions: A Statistical Framework

Dynamic violence and injury prevention interventions located within community settings raise evaluation challenges by virtue of their complex structure, focus, and aims. They try to address many risk factors simulta neously, are often overlapped in their implementation, and their imple mentation may be phased over time. This article proposes a statistical and analytic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel, multi system, multi-component, community-driven, dynamic interventions. The proposed framework builds on meta regression methodology and recently proposed approaches for pooling results from multi-component interven tion studies. The methodology is applied to the evaluation of the effec tiveness of South African community-centered injury prevention and safety promotion interventions. The proposed framework allows for complex interventions to be disaggregated into their constituent parts in order to extract their specific effects. The potential utility of the framework is suc cessfully illustrated using contact crime data from select police stations in Johannesburg. The proposed framework and statistical guidelines proved to be useful to study the effectiveness of complex, dynamic, community-based interventions as a whole and of their components. The framework may help researchers and policy makers to adopt and study a specific methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of complex intervention programs.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Complex, Multi-component, Dynamic, Community Based Injury Prevention Interventions: A Statistical Framework

Dynamic violence and injury prevention interventions located within community settings raise evaluation challenges by virtue of their complex structure, focus, and aims. They try to address many risk factors simulta neously, are often overlapped in their implementation, and their imple mentation may be phased over time. This article proposes a statistical and analytic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel, multi system, multi-component, community-driven, dynamic interventions. The proposed framework builds on meta regression methodology and recently proposed approaches for pooling results from multi-component interven tion studies. The methodology is applied to the evaluation of the effec tiveness of South African community-centered injury prevention and safety promotion interventions. The proposed framework allows for complex interventions to be disaggregated into their constituent parts in order to extract their specific effects. The potential utility of the framework is suc cessfully illustrated using contact crime data from select police stations in Johannesburg. The proposed framework and statistical guidelines proved to be useful to study the effectiveness of complex, dynamic, community-based interventions as a whole and of their components. The framework may help researchers and policy makers to adopt and study a specific methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of complex intervention programs.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Navigating and Reimagining Community Engagement amidst COVID-19

Community engagement is a critical manifestation of a humanising approach on how to respond to various psychosocial and structural violence challenges in the context of a pandemic. Community engagement within the context of the current global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) requires creative and innovative responses. Institutions have had to reconfigure their community engagement due to restrictive measures instituted by governments to curb the spread of the virus. This paper aims to reflect on the conversations and experiences of community activist researchers in implementing creative ways of engagement to address pertinent psychosocial and structural violence issues affecting communities during COVID-19. Through a qualitative reflexive approach, we identified the following themes: (1) Challenges in community-engaged research during a pandemic; (2) Structural violence and psychosocial issues; and (3) Innovative opportunities to bridge gaps and confront community realities. The pandemic has produced challenges but has also allowed for opportunities to reimagine community engagement. It has created opportunities and novel ways of collaborating with multisectoral social actors to address the psychosocial challenges during the pandemic and to remain actively engaged with communities.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Stimulating and building compassionate and humanising networks for promoting sustainable safer and healthier communities: Researcher reflexivity on the Local Network of Care (LNOC)

There is a current burgeoning interest in networking as an approach to working more effectively in under-resourced communities. This study explores networking as a critical strategy to strengthen relationships among social actors and mobilise assets and resources to address challenges of health, safety, injury, and social justice in disadvantaged communities. The Local Network of Care (LNOC), is used as an illustration, to reflect on the operational processes and values of the network to engender and build just and sustainable safer communities. Primary sources of data include newspaper clippings, LNOC social contract, institutional annual reports, monthly agendas, attendance registers, and reflective notes of members of the LNOC. The findings illustrate that building a humanising, cohesive, supportive and trusting network can contribute to strengthening agency and transforming individuals and organisations. Additionally, it can contribute to sustainability, building safer and just communities, and mobilise assets and resources of the network to help mitigate psychosocial and economic challenges