Skip to content

COVID-19

We are working to save lives and protect livelihoods within poor and vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How we’re responding to COVID-19

Our objective is to save lives and protect livelihoods within poor and vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are advising on evidence-based approaches specific to each region’s capabilities and needs. This page describes our COVID-19 work and provides resources, which we hope will help others in their response efforts.

Demand-driven partnerships

India
Using our Data on Demand platform, we are conducting rapid and responsive phone surveys to inform the Government of India on COVID-19 knowledge, behavior change, and economic effects. We are collecting data from 37 high-need districts across eight states in India, which represent 80 million of India’s poorest residents. These results are and will be informing policy decisions of key government officials on economic relief and national behavior change communication strategies.

Philippines
We have performed a rapid evidence review on social distancing measures and economic support measures for the Department of Health (DOH), which has directly contributed to the government’s social distancing efforts in March.

In addition, we are conducting a rapid phone survey in Parañaque City to understand low-income citizens’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices on COVID-19, their non-COVID health concerns, and the socio-economic effects of the lockdown. The results will be used by the DOH’s COVID-19 Task Force to improve COVID-19 policy responses. We are also providing further support to the DOH to help inform future decisions, such as when to reopen schools.

Ghana
We are conducting health facility surveys in rural areas to inform COVID-related health commodities and the use of manless drone delivery. We are also advising on evidence-based approaches to remote education including radio learning, interactive television instruction, and online learning via web-based instruction for the Ministry of Education.

Malawi
We are supporting targeted economic response efforts for high-need populations by identifying the highest-risk areas for COVID-19 infections and deaths. In addition, we are advising the government to reroute existing cash transfer and social protection programs to reach populations made more vulnerable by COVID-19. We are working with our counterparts at the Ministry of Social Welfare.

South Africa
In collaboration with the National Development Agency (NDA), we have created a policy brief on promoting healthy behaviors and social protection to vulnerable populations. The brief has been shared with the Department of Social Development to inform decision-making on COVID-19 response efforts.

Services and innovations

We are also providing rapid, remote data collection and phone-based surveys to support COVID-19 response and interrupted survey efforts. We have refined our approach through years of systematic design testing. It is safe and efficient with transparent data quality characteristics.

View our remote data collection services

We are providing rapid, remote data collection and phone-based surveys to support COVID-19 response and interrupted survey efforts.