The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges for people across all geographies, socio economic strata. In response to such a crisis, India adopted a nation­wide lockdown strategy since 24th March 2020 which con­tinued partially till Sept'20. This led to a sudden mass exodus of migrants living in cities back to the villages, posing a high risk of spread of COVID-19 in rural areas. The geographies, reach and accessibility of information and services in these areas was low. In the state of Chhattisgarh, it was estimated that 1,25,000 migrants returned to the state. The already resource constrained state faced a challenge of increased risk of spread of COVID-19 with the returnee migrants. The socio-cultural norms and unique concerns of these areas required a need to adopt effective risk communication and health education strategies for prevention of COVID-19. A need was felt to understand the existing knowledge regarding COVID-19, prevention measures and factors driving the adoption of prevention measures. Jhpiego's USAID funded health system strengthening project in India- NISHTHA- provided technical assistance to over 12 states in Emergency Response during the pandemic. As part of the project, to inform the program activities, this survey was done in partnership with Samarthan, a development support organization, in rural areas of Chhattisgarh, a state in central India. The findings from the study were used to design effective communication strategies to contain the spread of COVID-19 in these areas.

When the first COVID case was confirmed in Yemen in April 2020, UNICEF C4D in Yemen had been already mandated to lead implementation of the UN-wide COVID RCCE strategy. A fundamental component of that strategy was collecting critical social and behavioural information on COVID to inform the response. Nevertheless, the restrictive environment by authorities on data collection as well as movement restrictions due to COVID had prevented employing a research agency to conduct the assessment. To overcome this challenge, UNICEF C4D team utilized existing key implementing partners to carry out field work of the assessment as part of their routine community interventions using C4D community-based network of volunteers and religious leaders spread all over the country. The other elements of the assessment were done inhouse by C4D team. To further enrich evidence generation, C4D developed an online rumor tracking tool through which people and volunteers can share information by smartphones on COVID related rumors being circulated in their communities.
Despite the restrictions, the COVID evidence generation activities were conducted successfully. The findings were pivotal for guiding COVID RCCE. The subsequent rounds of the assessment were key for tracking shifts in knowledge and behaviours, assessing COVID RCCE efforts and revising RCCE messages and interventions to address gaps. The rumour tracking tool was essential in responding to COVID related rumours and misconceptions. 
Leveraging the community-based groups to support evidence generation ensures sustainability of these activities, strengthens capacity of partners, and contributes to positively reshaping the power dynamics in the community.

COVID-19 continues to be a major public health issue in South Africa with 3.7 million people infected and about 100,000 deaths to date. Effectively mobilizing the population for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance requires persuasive messages that address the psychosocial variables linked with vaccine hesitancy. Using 2021 data from a global serial cross-sectional survey of Facebook users (COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey; CTIS), this study applied the ideation model to segment respondents into latent classes depending on their responses to eight ideational questions. Measurement and structural latent class analysis models were estimated using MPlus. Four latent classes emerged from the data: worried doubters (distrust science and worried about COVID; 35.6%), worried believers (trust science and worried about COVID; 18.4%), confident doubters (distrust science and not worried about COVID; 30.3%) and confident believers (trust science and not worried about COVID; 15.7%). The classes least likely to report intention for vaccination were the confident doubters (Pr.=0.063) and worried doubters (Pr.=0.207). These two classes display distrust in science; they represent about two thirds of the population. Age and sex are the variables predictive of class membership. Efforts to promote the COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa should prioritize doubters and emphasize building trust in science. The messages disseminated through credible sources should be based on the latest science about the infection. Men and older adults (aged 25 years or more) should be priority groups for these efforts. Efforts to increase perceived risk while strengthening the self-efficacy for action are relevant.

Over the past 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected billions of lives across the world.  Effective management of the pandemic has largely depended on understanding people's knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and practices overtime. In a fast-changing disease landscape and one in which global lockdown measures prevented face-to-face surveys, the Community Rapid Assessment (CRA) was initiated to quickly adapt to the situation and influence the Risk Communication and Community Engagement component of the response, by capturing high quality, real-time data using high frequency mobile phone telephony in 8 countries  in Eastern and Southern Africa.    
These real-time data collected through three rounds in 2020 and 2021 helped to provide a rich and much-needed picture of the individual and community behavioral component of the outbreak.  In addition, the CRA provided information regarding people's adoption of preventative health behaviors, coping strategies and needs as the pandemic evolved, including their perception around the reopening of schools.  As vaccines became available, the CRA also examined people's willingness to accept the vaccine during peak campaign periods.  
The pandemic has shown that rapid, efficient, and evidence-based responses have been required to build ownership of and trust in COVID-19 responses through community-based processes.  Addressing the pandemic has also forced UNICEF to explore alternative methods of gathering evidence in order to improve its programming.  Such methods, however, have required balancing the need for methodological rigor against the need for affordable and effective options given the limited access to communities.