The role of trust in risk communication
Evidence and learnings from IRC’s COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community Engagement strategy in northeast Nigeria
Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) is key for preventing and mitigating the effects of infectious diseases through increasing the uptake of preventative practices, helping overcome fears, and countering misinformation. With widespread rumors around the COVID-19 vaccination, RCCE is more relevant now than ever. Trust is a key component of successful risk communication in humanitarian settings and in the aftermath of natural disasters. Without trust from the community in the communication medium, the message, and the stakeholders relaying it, RCCE can easily fall apart.
“In communicating risk information, trust and credibility are a spokesperson’s more precious assets. Trust and credibility are difficult to obtain. Once lost they are almost impossible to regain.”
— The Environmental Protection Agency’s Seven Cardinal Rules of Risk Communication
The IRC’s Evidence to Action (E2A) team recently completed a review of successful strategies for building trust at the request of the IRC RCCE Taskforce — a body formed at the onset of COVID-19 response in March 2020 to help build and support a more robust RCCE strategy and implementation materials.
Implementing a comprehensive cross-sectoral RCCE strategy is a relatively new undertaking for the IRC, with Nigeria one of the first countries in which the IRC has implemented an active COVID-19 RCCE strategy and program. The IRC works in three states in the northeast of the country in partnership with six local governments. Since last year, IRC Nigeria has reached over 86,243 individuals in 110 communities, with the support of 200 RCCE Community Focal Points and 50 staff across technical sectors. In this article, we explore key lessons the IRC has learned through this evidence review and link learnings to the IRC’s work in Northeast Nigeria.
Crafting the message and communicating the risk
How a message is delivered, from the medium to language to actual content, is critical for establishing trust in information for behavior change. The level of trust in communication often depends on subtle cues, such as how someone expresses themselves through body language, gestures, dress, appearance, and manners. The involvement of local community members in the creation and dissemination of risk communication is critical to ensure messaging aligns with the local context. Timeliness, transparency, consistency, clarity, and positive framing in messaging are key.
Use of local language
Messaging should be made available in locally spoken languages to ensure the widest reach, with those in charge of risk communication familiar with how they are spoken across groups. When there is a general mistrust of strangers, using the local spoken language can be a way to create trust. Understanding the choice of words used and how they are perceived locally, as well as in what language the target audience is most comfortable discussing specific issues, such as healthcare, is key.
In addition to Hausa, IRC Nigeria works with clients who speak a wide variety of languages including Kanuri, Fulfulde, Marghi, and Mandara. As language can be tied to tribal affiliation, excluding a language can mean excluding a traditionally marginalized group of people. The IRC has partnered with Translators Without Borders to provide accurate messaging translations and audio recordings in different languages. As a result, the IRC has been largely successful in getting the message out in the necessary languages — only 2.4% of clients noted that the main reason they have trouble accessing key information on basic services and COVID-19 is because it was provided in the wrong language.
“We’ve seen some other languages in the community we had not really been working with and we understand now that these messages didn’t really get to those individuals because of language barriers. So now all the materials we produce are in all languages.”
— Dorcas Kingsley David, Community Engagement Officer, IRC Nigeria
Timing and framing
Trust is based in part on the transparency and actionability of a message. During a recent IRC client survey in Nigeria, one of the top ten reasons people gave for having trouble accessing the information they needed was because even when information had been given, it was often wrong or out-of-date. Thus, sharing the most up-to-date information as soon as it is available is important for building credibility.
It is also key to focus on messaging that inspires hope and action, such as including previous positive experiences and breaking down problems so people feel capable of changing them — such as outlining the behavioral actions necessary for preventing the spread of a disease. When presenting a message visually, the meaning should be explicit and easily-understandable. Careful attention should paid to the use of color, as associations can vary from culture to culture.
Messaging mediums
Communication mediums vary by the end user and context, with different sub-groups expressing an array of preferences. For the IRC, programming tends to target women, youth, and other marginalized groups in both camps for internally displaced people and host communities who are otherwise likely to experience information gaps. Top barriers to accessing information among clients include a lack of funds, lack of a phone, functional illiteracy, social/cultural/religious norms, privacy concerns, and digital illiteracy. Evidence shows people are generally most likely to trust information delivered in person or through word of mouth, alongside any platform that allows for two-way communication.
In order to better serve people with limited access to phones and lower levels of literacy, IRC Nigeria focused their communication strategies on visual and audio mediums, such as posters, radio jingles, loud speakers, and megaphones. They are also supporting Translators Without Borders to roll out a WhatsApp platform that is focused mostly in the city of Maiduguri, where a larger percentage of their clients have smartphones.
The IRC’s messaging strategy has helped to counter misinformation: 70% of clients noted that receiving information helped them to take action and change their behavior to prevent COVID-19 “completely.” Nearly a third said they had previously heard misinformation, rumors, or concerns about COVID-19 they knew to be untrue or found out to be untrue later.
“We engage with the staff that work on a daily basis in the communities and know them really well. We have a new campaign we are working on right now, and are trying to make it fun and funny and make it understandable to someone who doesn’t read, while also to someone who does read, and balancing the need for explanations with the need for brevity. It’s challenging, but it’s something we’re constantly trying to balance.”
- Caitlin Erskine, Senior Urban Resilience Manager, IRC Nigeria
Building local partnerships
When COVID-19 hit last spring and a one month lockdown was ordered, the team had to act and adapt quickly. However, traditional community engagement and outreach practices were not possible due to the nature of social distancing and strict lockdown measures. This meant that the team had to come up with a new strategy on-the-go to keep up with the fast changing nature of the situation and disseminate quickly-changing COVID-19 messaging. IRC Nigeria thus focused their strategy on using existing community structures and establishing two-way communication channels to have the broadest reach.
The IRC implemented their RCCE strategy through existing and ‘organic’ community groups, such as sector-based groups (e.g. Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Committees, Protection Action Groups, etc.), elders councils, women’s groups, and traditional leadership structures. After COVID-19 hit, IRC Nigeria brought together all of the sectors working in each community and asked them to make a list of Community Volunteers working for each sector locally. They then selected two to four RCCE Community Focal Points among them (depending on the size of the community) to represent different sectors. Due to social distancing, they trained existing IRC staff and focal points over the phone across all sectors to implement RCCE activities, such as spreading information via megaphone.
After lockdown, the RCCE Community Focal Points distributed posters, banners, and masks in their communities, including at regular outreach information sessions they held while ensuring social distancing. On a weekly basis, Community Focal Points, IRC staff, and influential community leaders worked together to determine together the best ways to safely cascade messages to the wider community, prioritize vulnerable individuals, and collect community information needs, rumors/misinformation, and client feedback.
“RCCE has helped to build trust between myself and community members. Before these activities, as the women’s leader I usually only engaged with women in the community. Since RCCE, I’ve come to know and engage with so many more people. Even when I walk down the street, now people wave at me and know me, because of my work. When we were distributing soap, I didn’t have enough to give to everyone I engaged with — but people didn’t complain, like they normally would, because they know I had good intentions.”
— Hajja Gana Dawud, Women’s Leader and RCCE Community Focal Point in Maiduguri
Engaging community and religious leaders
Involving trusted local community members and leaders, including religious leaders, in messaging can help earn the trust of communities. When IRC clients in Nigeria were asked about their top sources for finding important information such as on COVID-19, they noted community leaders, key community members, community-based organizations, and religious leaders among their top seven sources.
In each community, the IRC community focal points have biweekly conversations with religious and traditional leaders to obtain community feedback through organic communication pathways. Such leaders can include individuals from the traditional leadership structure, composed in part by village and ward chiefs referred to as “Bulamas” and “Lawanas.” They may also include leaders of women’s groups, youth groups, elders councils, and project focal points (such as Protection Action Groups, Community-based Child Protection Committees, and community health workers).
“Religious [and traditional] leaders are very relevant to passing the COVID-19 messages because they are the authorities in the community … It is important to focus on them to make sure the messages they are passing through the community are valued and accurate.”
— Dorcas Kingsley David, Community Engagement Officer, IRC Nigeria
Targeting vulnerable groups
As part of a community engagement strategy, it is important to ensure vulnerable groups are being reached and actually receive trusted information. Identifying entry points for community engagement can be helpful. In Nigeria, entry points for engagement could include Bulama’s wives, project focal points, and women’s community service organizations. For children, entry points could be teachers and caregivers. For the elderly, it could be community elders. For internally displaced persons, who form about half the clients the IRC works with in Northeast Nigeria, it may be camp managers or other community service organization staff- if they are located in urban areas.
Bi-directional communication and feedback mechanisms
Evidence shows that messaging strategies that are two-way, interactive, and personable which allow the target audience to ask questions directly to the messenger, are among the most trusted. Being able to have open dialogue in which clients feel they can ask questions freely can help to improve their trust in the information received. Overall people tend to trust information they receive in person more, e.g. through local community meetings and educational presentations, as it gives them a space to ask questions. When an in-person meeting is not possible, online options for two-way communication, such as through Facebook messenger or WhatsApp groups, can help build trust.
IRC Nigeria has three major feedback mechanisms: Community Focal Points, an IRC hotline number available in all intervention locations, and suggestion boxes. 75% of client survey respondents said they knew how to share complaints or problems. Slightly more than half who provided feedback said their concerns were addressed ‘completely’ or ‘very much.’
The IRC originally received some initial negative feedback through it’s feedback mechanisms. There were a lot of requests to couple COVID-19 sensitization activities with distribution of supplies that would allow communities to actually take preventive measures. In response, the IRC started pairing their sensitization sessions with soap distribution. In the future, they hope to engage local communities, specifically local women, on how to make homemade soap as a more sustainable option.
“People would say things like ‘What’s this talk about COVID?’ You do all this talk and you do no action. You tell me to wash my hands, but I don’t have any soap, or any water, or I don’t have a face mask.”
— Caitlin Erskine, Senior Urban Resilience Manager, IRC Nigeria
The challenges of cross-sector collaboration and funding gaps
Beyond trust-building, implementing RCCE activities does not come without its fair share of challenges. For IRC Nigeria, learning to work cross-sectorally, managing volunteer and staff workload, and securing continued funding for sustainable RCCE programming are some of the major challenges the team continues to face. Below are some lessons the team has learned over the past year:
It is important to work cross-sectorally — RCCE needs technical expertise from all sectors to deliver information and respond to questions about holistic needs from the community.
IRC Nigeria has a working group of staff across different sectors, but there are challenges when it comes to reporting lines, balancing responsibility, monitoring progress, aligning sector obligations, holding staff accountable, and fostering meaningful participation in working group meetings. While some smaller field offices are able to work across sectors very easily and regularly talk about cross-cutting issues, other larger offices like IRC’s main office in Maiduguri may find it far more difficult to work cross-sectorally. It can be difficult to overcome the tendency in the humanitarian field to work in silos. Furthermore, a lack of coordination among international NGOs and government officials on RCCE activities can lead to complications and redundancies and present challenges for coherent targeting and messaging.
Integrate RCCE activities into roles and performance evaluation
IRC staff have mentioned how RCCE activities were often too much to carry out in addition to their regular workloads and often placed priority on tasks that their performance evaluations are tied to as their livelihoods depend on it. Unfortunately, these do not always include RCCE activities. Furthermore, some staff noted that communities do not have sufficient materials to implement prevention measures.
The future of RCCE will depend on continuous and sustained funding
COVID-19 provides a powerful illustration of the importance of proactively embedding RCCE into the IRC’s work as a humanitarian agency, and is needed beyond outbreak response. Since the IRC did not receive future RCCE grants, at the time of writing, the IRC Nigeria team wanted to do something light-touch that would keep the message alive with the community. They focused on preparing shirts, caps, and face masks with messaging on it to give to key community members to wear around the community — something that will last a bit longer once they are no longer able to sponsor radio jingles or posters.
“With RCCE I have had a lot of opportunities to interact with every member of the community, from different tribes and cultures. It also gives the opportunity to discuss other important issues in the community, besides just COVID-19, like hygiene practices, breast feeding, child safeguarding, and sanitation. Even though the RCCE grant has finished, I’m still regularly meeting with people in the community to discuss these important issues and answer their questions on COVID-19.”
— Hajja Gana Dawud, Women’s Leader and RCCE Community Focal Point in Maiduguri
An opportunity to learn and plan for the future
The past year has been an everyday exercise for the IRC in risk communication and building trust with our clients. COVID-19 has presented an opportunity for the IRC to truly engage with RCCE for the first time and create a comprehensive RCCE framework, which can be localized to the specific needs of the many contexts in which we work. To successfully communicate a risk and encourage the adoption of preventive practices, trust in both the medium and the message itself are critical. The IRC RCCE strategy includes many key factors for building trust, such as the use of local language, consistency and coherency in messaging, working with traditional/religious leaders, two-way communication channels and client feedback mechanisms, regularly collecting and countering misinformation, as well as visual and audio messaging considerations.
As the IRC oversees its plan for supporting the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines in the countries in which we work, such strategies will be key for helping to overcome fears and ensure uptake. The IRC is now better prepared to respond to future crises of all types that, like COVID-19, require the ability to effectively communicate accurate messaging that inspires behavior change in a rapidly changing situation where adaptation and continuous learning are key.
For more information on IRC’s RCCE framework and global resources, consult the RCCE website.
This article refers to the RCCE evidence review on trust-building. You can also find here IRC’s recently completed an evidence review on vaccination uptake.
