How the IRC is mobilizing research and innovation to fight COVID-19
In the face of a worldwide crisis, research and innovation is more important than ever.
COVID-19 is now confirmed in crisis-affected countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Burkina Faso, where populations were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the outbreak. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is ramping up its response to the outbreak, with a focus on delivering life-saving and life-critical services in crisis zones with especially weak health systems.
We know that people displaced from their homes and those living in crisis will be the hardest hit by this outbreak. 80 percent of people in need of humanitarian aid live in countries with high levels of displacement as well as overstretched and weak infrastructure. Hand-washing with soap and clean water, visiting a health clinic, and self isolation or social distancing is difficult, or impossible for families living in cramped spaces and crowded camps. Conflict has often hollowed out health care systems, which may lack of staff, beds, oxygen and other equipment, increasing the risk of death in severe COVID-19 cases.
The potential impact of COVID-19 in the areas we work could be devastating: As Center for Global Development Senior Fellow, Jeremy Konyndyk, recently said in Foreign Policy: “You would have a hard time designing a more dangerous setting for the spread of this disease than an informal IDP [internally displaced persons] settlement,” he said. “You have a crowded population, very poor sanitation … very poor disease surveillance, very poor health services. This could be extraordinarily dangerous … and I don’t think that’s getting enough global attention yet.”
The Airbel Impact Lab’s role in the response
Research and innovation are needed now more than ever to leverage evidence on what works in during these types of crises, create new solutions to respond to the pandemic, and understand both the immediate and long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 on the most vulnerable.
Our staff are mobilizing to support IRC’s broad response and help the organization and the sector prepare for what is to come. In line with the IRC, our goal is to (i) ensure the safety and health of our staff, (ii) maintain business continuity where feasible and adapt programs where needed, and (iii) directly respond to the crisis. We know we have to change and adapt how we work to continue delivering life-saving services to people in need around the world. We’ll be leveraging our team’s unique expertise to help contingency and program adaptation.
Understanding the evidence
The IRC has always been committed to using the best available evidence in decision-making and programming. As COVID-19 rapidly spreads across the globe, we face an increasing number of decisions that require quick but prudent responses.
Not only must we reorient and adapt our programming to the shifting needs and realities of those we serve, we must also adjust the ways in which we plan and coordinate internally, collaborate with others, and support our staff at the frontlines. As we rethink how to deliver our services in ways that protect both our clients and staff, we’re working with colleagues across the IRC to identify the best available evidence. For such decisions, evidence from impact evaluations, implementation science, case studies and process reviews is invaluable. For example, as we move to radio-delivered programming in many contexts without digital connectivity, we’re leveraging the evidence we have on what works.
Rapidly reviewing the evidence base helps us to identify promising ideas, spot gaps in knowledge, and avoid approaches that are proven ineffective, costly and inappropriate for the contexts in which we work. By using evidence, the IRC can move fast enough to safely continue our life-saving efforts while thinking slowly and carefully enough to make sure those efforts make a positive and meaningful difference.
We want to make these quick evidence reviews a public good, so we’ll post them on our Medium page as we develop them.
Problems we’re looking at solving
We’re at the early stages of innovation, working with our frontline colleagues to determine how to adapt our ongoing programs where appropriate.
For areas with digital connectivity, we’re exploring how we can use technology to ensure program continuity while leveraging much of the excellent existing material that partners are collating.
We’re also examining how good design principles can help us deliver services outside of public institutions that will likely be strapped in the coming weeks and months. A crucial design objective is identifying how to deliver services while minimizing risks for our staff and clients when interacting. Specifically, we’re exploring how we can work through community health care workers to deliver malnutrition treatment, sexual and reproductive health services and maternal and newborn services in these contexts.
We also know that in health crises, information availability is a huge challenge. Disinformation spreads quickly, and it can be tough to verify or disprove information once it starts to spread. We are working to ensure we are delivering accurate, credible and timely information in line with how clients consume information.
The humanitarian sector was already stretched thin in terms of funding before COVID-19. What happens now that we add another layer onto that? To think creatively here, we’re looking at financing mechanisms that can be used to strengthen our response. One idea is developing a bulk procurement facility to reduce the cost of purchasing essential items like personal protective equipment and testing kits. We’re also exploring how anticipatory financing would allow for faster response by implementers and donors even after the initial trigger of an event has already happened. And finally, we’re looking into longer-term financing which could enable stronger healthcare and economic recovery.
Ensuring business continuity, where it makes sense
Across the Airbel Impact Lab portfolio, we are evaluating which projects should continue on as normal, which should be adapted, and which should be placed on pause during the outbreak, using a “stop/go/adapt” framework. This will allow us to rapidly re-allocate time and energy to the COVID-19 response. Projects that continue will have full risk mitigation strategies, and contingency plans. For essential programming, we’re already starting to think about adaptations that will allow for safe, continued delivery of programming.
Opening the Innovation Fund for COVID-19 response
We are committed to fostering new thinking and new solutions that deliver the most impactful and cost-effective products, services, and delivery systems possible for crisis-affected people. That’s why we created the Innovation Fund in the first place — a pool of flexible capital we use to fund a new generation of solutions at the IRC for the people who need it most. We’re now using the Innovation Fund to provide catalytic investments for innovation, research, and new solutions for IRC programming for COVID-19 response.
While the circumstances around the globe have changed, our values have not. We are still committed to generating evidence-based people-first solutions.
We will continue to update you on how we’re using our expertise in research and innovation to respond to this crisis.
Want to get involved? Please reach out at airbel@rescue.org.
