Coordination, Learning, and Adaptation: Advice for the Ebola Czar

Written by Rupali J. Limay, PhD., Naheed, Ahman, and Tara Sullivan, this post originally appeared on K4Health.

Drawing upon our experiences in using knowledge management techniques for family planning, we realized that knowledge management could lead to a stronger response in the Ebola outbreak, specifically the role of the Ebola Czar. While a connection between family planning, knowledge management, and Ebola might seem like a stretch, we noticed that every article about Ebola articulated issues relating to gaps in coordinating the response – between donors, local organizations, media, and the health system. Wanting to share lessons learned from our family planning experience to a broader audience, we presented at the 2015 Global Health Mini-University, an annual conference for public health professionals and students. Our session, “Coordination, Learning, and Adaptation: Advice for the Ebola Czar,” taught participants about the foundational components of coordination through knowledge management techniques, including Net-Mapping, peer assists, and after-action reviews. We then asked participants to apply these strategies to coordination, learning, and adaptation issues related to the Ebola response.

For example, in 2010, members of K4Health led a research study in Ethiopia focused on identifying the country’s primary family planning/reproductive health actors, barriers and facilitators to knowledge exchange, and opportunities to use knowledge to support practice across three levels of the health system: national, regional, and zonal. Using Net-mapping, we visualized information and resource exchange across the Ethiopian health system, to help identify bottlenecks and gaps in knowledge flow, leading to a set of recommendations for improving the knowledge management system.

Participants at our Mini-University session were given the opportunity to plan how they would use Net-mapping to help address coordination issues in the following scenario:

“You have just been appointed as Ebola Czar in Country X. Today, government officials report that five people an hour are being infected with the Ebola Virus Disease. The number infected is doubling every 20 days. The health system is in crisis.  Already in short supply, numerous health personnel have died of EVD. The African Development Bank, African Union, UN, WHO, USAID, World Bank, World Food Program, and numerous implementing agencies have offered your government their help. Describe how you could use Net-mapping to help coordinate an international response to the Ebola epidemic in your country. “

• Participants were then asked to think through the following questions:
• Who will you invite to participate in the Net-mapping exercise?
• What key question related to the Ebola epidemic response will you ask?
• Who are the key stakeholders?
• What are the important links between stakeholders that you will examine?
• How will you use information from the mapping activity to help coordinate a response?
• How would you incorporate this technique as part of your routine work?
• How can you make the case for including this type of KM tool in your work? Who do you need to convince? What resources are required?
• What are the benefits/drawbacks of this tool?

Through this exercise and others using peer assist and after-action review, participants were able to apply KM techniques that have been successfully used in family planning to address coordination, learning, and adaptation in the context of Ebola. Participants provided new insights into strengthening the application of knowledge management tools within limited-resource settings and successfully advocating for such approaches in a global health context. We learned much by exchanging knowledge with them and plan to adapt the strategies they shared to solve pressing family planning challenges.