Triatominae biochemistry goes to school: evaluation of a novel tool for teaching basic biochemical concepts of Chagas disease vectors

Communication in Neglected Tropical Diseases' elimination: A scoping review and call for action

BACKGROUND

Although the practice of communication is often called upon when intervening and involving communities affected by NTDs, the disciplinary framework of health communication research has been largely absent from NTD strategies. To illustrate how practices conceptualized and developed within the communication field have been applied in the context of NTD elimination, we conducted a scoping review focusing on two diseases currently targeted for elimination by the WHO: lymphatic filariasis and Chagas disease.

METHODS

We examined studies published between 2012 and 2020 in five electronic databases. Selected articles were required to (i) have explicit references to communication in either the abstract, title, or key words; (ii) further elaborate on the search terms (communication, message, media, participation and health education) in the body of the article; and (iii) sufficiently describe communication actions associated to those terms. Using the C-Change Socio-Ecological Model for Social and Behavior Change Communication as a reference, the articles were analysed to identify communication activities, theoretical frameworks, and/or rationales involved in their design, as well as their intended level of influence (individual, interpersonal, community, or enabling environment).

RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS

A total of 43 articles were analysed. Most interventions conceptualized communication as a set of support tools or supplemental activities delivering information and amplifying pre-defined messages aimed at increasing knowledge, encouraging community involvement, promoting individual behavior change, or securing some degree of acceptability of proposed strategies. Although important attempts at further exploring communication capabilities were identified, particularly in participation-based strategies, for most studies, communication consisted of an underdeveloped and under-theorized approach. We contend that a more complex understanding of the capacities offered by the health communication field could help attain the biomedical and social justice goals proposed in NTD elimination strategies. Three ways in which the field of health communication could further enhance NTD efforts are presented: informing interventions with theory-based frameworks, exploring the political complexity of community participation in specific contexts, and identifying conceptualizations of culture implied in interventions' design.

CONCLUSION

This article is a call to action to consider the resources offered by the health communication field when researching, designing, or implementing NTD interventions.

Constructing online concept maps in CMap Cloud collaboratively: Connecting pathways in case scenarios

Learning metabolic pathways is vital for understanding biochemical processes and all of their implications for life. Their learning in the virtual environment is complex and generative learning strategies, such as the construction of online conceptual maps, can help in this process. This article presents a proposal for the collaborative construction of virtual concept maps on metabolism by students in the CMap Cloud browser application (free). A sequence of steps is suggested, which include online group brainstorming and discussions, peer assessment, and teachers feedback. This proposal is flexible and can be adapted to the didactic and technological reality of each teacher.

What are we talking about when we talk about education and Chagas? A systematic review of the issue

More than 110 years has passed since the first publications on Chagas disease, and it still urges the necessity of understanding it as a complex socioenvironmental issue in which components of diverse nature converge and interact beyond the biomedical and epidemiological aspects. The current scenarios of the issue, both rural and Latin American as urban and global, demand that the education on Chagas disease include all possible contexts: where there are insect vectors and where there are not; inside and outside Latin America; in rural, periurban, and urban areas; in formal and non-formal educational environments. We consider essential the requirement of both an integral approach that overcomes the biomedical aspect to include the multidimensionality of the issue and a dialogical educational perspective that allows individuals and communities to analyze, decide, and lead contextualized prevention and promotion actions regarding their health. In this study, we surveyed, described, and critically analyzed studies approaching the link education-Chagas disease in scientific publications from the last 15 years. We aimed at contributing methodological-theoretical elements to (re)think the development of educational research and experiences that truly help facing this issue. From the electronic search of scientific literature in 6 databases, we found 426 articles, out of which we selected 25. We incorporated 10 articles from other sources to this initial corpus and performed both qualitative and quantitative analyses over the total number [35] to characterize the studied works in general, focusing on the conceptions on the Chagas disease issue and the underlying health education approaches.