Health action with informed and engaged societies
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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COVID-19 Personal Triage and Educational Tool

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"Many of us rely on healthcare professionals to provide expert guidance, but getting access to care and testing at the right time is often not possible."

THINKMD's COVID-19 screening and educational tool guides users through a COVID-19 self-risk assessment. The goal is to fill a void in the paucity of direct, real-time, population health data (in particular, in the absence of widespread testing), as well as to decrease the burden on healthcare delivery systems and to increase healthcare capacity where it is most limited. By acquiring time-specific population health and geo-tagged epidemiology data for disease surveillance analysis, the tool can also provide health ministries and international health agencies with data for developing and monitoring response strategies, as well as for predictive disease outbreak modeling, to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and to maximise appropriate testing and healthcare delivery.

The tool is based on peer-reviewed World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) clinical data on presenting signs, symptoms, and risk factors. Each personal assessment determines if an individual has none, some, or many of the clinical symptoms and presenting features associated with COVID-19. The tool also provides WHO and CDC educational information on how and when to seek medical care, and it communicates recommended protective and preventive measures. Other characteristics of the progressive web-based application (app):

  • It is functional on any desktop, tablet, or mobile smartphone.
  • It is fully functional offline for use by health organisations in areas with limited connectivity and/or by frontline health workers in the field as they perform community-based screening and education.
  • It is expected to be available via SMS/USSD for feature phone users to ensure widespread global distribution.
  • It is dynamic and will be updated and expanded as new clinical and public health data is acquired and as country specific health ministries and international aid agencies update their response, guidelines, and recommendations as the pandemic progresses globally.
  • It can be designed to include specific URL links, or national hotline numbers to access local, community, and national guideline information and recommendation sites and healthcare service/testing sites.

THINKMD is collaborating with Mondia Media and its mobile network operator (MNO) partners to distribute the tool in Africa, Asia, and Europe. THINKMD is also working with the Tableau Foundation to build and provide country-specific COVID-19 data sets and customised, real-time visualisation dashboards for actionable decision making.

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English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi, and Bengali.

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THINKMD website and THINKMD's description of the personal triage and educational tool - both accessed on March 30 2020. Image credit: WCAX