Community engagement is a crucial part of preparedness and response to health emergencies. It can enable more effective and equitable approaches by listening and responding to people’s needs, aspirations and priorities as much as communicating information to people and seeking to guide their behaviour.
Learning from experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic can help to improve understanding of the concerns of diverse communities and needs to guide more appropriate, effective and equitable pandemic preparedness and response strategies for the future.
This brief summarises key findings and recommendations from a British Academy-funded project that investigated approaches and experiences of community engagement for pandemic preparedness and response in three superdiverse urban areas: Cleveland, Ohio, US; Marseille, France; and the London Borough of Ealing, UK.
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