A new, groundbreaking project to strengthen community-based disease surveillance in urban African settings.
BOSTON – The International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) has launched an innovative research initiative with The Task Force for Global Health to explore the social dynamics and determinants influencing disease detection and reporting in urban African settings. The project – implemented with support from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as part of the Strengthening Outbreak Notification and Response (SONAR) initiative – aims to enhance the effectiveness of health threats monitoring and early warning system for outbreaks by leveraging trusted community knowledge networks and frontline observations, which are a critical channel for early outbreak detection.
In many low-resource urban environments, community members and frontline healthcare workers are often the first to observe unusual health events, yet they lack the systems or platforms to report this information in real time. The ISID project seeks to address this gap by identifying how disease-related information circulates through communities and by developing strategies to convert local observations into actionable public health signals.
The first phase of the project will be conducted in Nigeria and Kenya, focusing on social network sampling in urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts. The initiative will analyze the roles of community leaders, health workers, local government, media, and informal influencers in shaping disease awareness, trust, and reporting practices.
“This project is about amplifying the voices of communities who are closest to the source of emerging threats,” said Linda MacKinnon, ISID’s CEO, “by understanding how information flows within these networks, we can enhance early warning systems and accelerate outbreak response.”
“The Task Force for Global Health is proud to contribute to this effort in transforming how we approach disease surveillance,” said SONAR Director Dr. Malembe S. Ebama. “This initiative will enhance our immediate ability to respond to outbreaks and lay the foundation for stronger, comprehensive public health systems in urban Africa for years to come. We are grateful for the partnership with ISID and the support of the Global Fund in making this project a reality.”
This collaborative effort underscores the commitment of ISID, the Global Fund, and the Task Force for Global Health to strengthen global health security. Localized, inclusive engagements with underserved communities provide the opportunity to learn from those on the frontlines, so communities, countries, and the world are better equipped for the next outbreak of significance.
About ISID
The mission of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) is to support health professionals, non-government organizations, and governments around the world in their efforts to prevent, investigate, and manage infectious disease outbreaks when they occur. The Society is dedicated to developing partnerships and to finding solutions to the problems of infectious diseases across the globe and encourages the collaborative efforts of human health, veterinary health, and environmental health communities working locally, nationally, and globally for best control and management of infectious diseases. The Society is a global non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization open to all individuals interested in infectious diseases.
For more information, reach out to:
Dr. Mohamed M. Sirdar
ISID Global Program Specialist
msirdar@isid.org
