Empowering SBC practitioners in emergencies: Lessons and challenges from applying Rapid Qualitative Assessments for community-centred response

Rapid qualitative assessment (RQA) is increasingly recognised as a powerful methodology to quickly uncover insights and concerns from affected communities, allowing Risk Communication Community Engagement (RCCE) and SBC practitioners to respond quickly with context-specific and community-driven solutions. Tools, approaches and lessons learned have evolved across successive outbreaks, strengthening the use of social science in emergency response. Building on advances made during the Ebola West Africa outbreak 2014-6 and COVID-19, RQAs have since been deployed in major cholera outbreaks in Malawi (2023), Zimbabwe and Zambia (2023-4) and Myanmar (2025). They have informed responses to drought in Zambia and Zimbabwe (2024), new Mpox outbreaks in Burundi, Uganda, South Africa and Malawi (2024-5), and viral haemorrhagic fevers in Tanzania and Rwanda (2024). The panellists have closely collaborated with SBC and emergency response colleagues to develop, apply and share tools and lessons that support use of RQAs across diverse contexts and organisations. They will share their experiences from multiple countries, highlighting how RQAs have revealed community perceptions and barriers to preventive behaviours that might otherwise have remained invisible to emergency response actors. Discussion will focus on operational and methodological challenges - such as conducting RQAs under pressure, addressing response actors' concerns about ethics and rigour, and communicating findings on structural issues that extend beyond immediate SBC and RCCE capacity. Panelists will also explore how SBC teams can strengthen their ability to communicate RQA insights credibly and persuasively, ensuring that community voices are heard and acted upon across emergency responses.