Opportunities and challenges in utilizing community assets to extend chronic care management in podoconiosis endemic areas: Evidence from Northwestern Ethiopia.

Community-based chronic care intervention is important in the control and prevention of lifelong conditions such as podoconiosis and similar 'intensive disease management' neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Despite a call for such interventions, few efforts have been made to identify opportunities and challenges related to their implementation. Employing a qualitative approach, this study explored the possibility of engaging community actors, physical places and networks to promote chronic care management in rural Ethiopia.

Improving health behaviours and attitudes around podoconiosis in Northern Western Ethiopia: Implementation and intervention effectiveness.

Background: Assessing how interventions are implemented is essential to understanding why interventions may or may not achieve their intended outcomes. There is little evidence about how interventions against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are being implemented. Guided by the Context and Implementation of Complex Intervention (CICI) framework, we evaluated an ongoing intervention against the NTD podoconiosis to examine the implementation process and its effectiveness in terms of improving shoe wearing practices, increasing knowledge and reducing stigmatizing attitudes towards podoconiosis in rural Ethiopia.

Experiences and lessons from structural interventions against COVID-19 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Introduction: Fighting pandemics like COVID-19 requires implementing successful structural and behavioral interventions that attempt to change the social and political environments to increase adherence to preventive behavior among community members. However, studying structural interventions implemented during pandemics and their challenges remains to be uncharted territory in developing implemented countries.

Objectives: Given this, we documented the experiences of implementing such interventions in Ethiopia with the aim of drawing lessons for future efforts to fight similar outbreaks in resource limited and low-income settings.

Health seeking behavior of street connected children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Background: Street children are the most neglected segments of the society with limited access to healthcare services. The vulnerability of street children to various health risks has been found by previous studies but little is known about their perceived susceptibility, preventive behavior and illness responses. Hence, the purpose of this study was to identify the health seeking behavior of street children in Addis Ababa.

Evaluating Rural Ethiopian Youths' Willingness and Competency to Promote Literacy Regarding G × E Influences on Podoconiosis.

Introduction: Engaging youth as peer educators has yet to be considered to promote literacy concerning conjoint genetic and environmental (G × E) influences on health conditions. Whether youth living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) could and would be willing to serve as lay educators of G × E education is unclear.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey of youth living in Southern Ethiopia was conducted from August to September 2017.

A cross-sectional survey to assess the risk factors associated with stigmatizing attitudes towards patients with podoconiosis among rural youth in southern Ethiopia.

Background: Many health conditions are associated with stigma due to beliefs about their causes and the physical changes experienced by patients. Among such conditions are several neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Podoconiosis, classified as an NTD, is a form of lymphoedema caused by the co-influence of genetic and environmental factors.

Applying Mental Model Methods to Characterize Understanding of Gene-Environment Influences: The Case of Podoconiosis in Ethiopia.

The rapid pace of genomic discovery has raised public expectation and concerns about the utility of new discoveries and their potential to exacerbate health disparities. Improving literacy concerning gene and environmental (GxE) contributors to disease is needed to avoid commonly observed deterministic misconceptions about genomics. Mental models approaches that incorporate community engagement processes could be used to inform GxE literacy-building interventions.

Rural youths' understanding of gene x environmental contributors to heritable health conditions: The case of podoconiosis in Ethiopia.

Objectives: Assess the feasibility of engaging youth to disseminate accurate information about gene by environmental (GxE) influences on podoconiosis, a neglected tropical lymphedema endemic in southern Ethiopia.

Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted with 377 youth randomly selected from 2 districts of Southern Ethiopia. Measures included GxE knowledge (4 true/false statements), preventive action knowledge (endorse wearing shoes and foot hygiene), causal misconceptions (11 items related to contagion) and confidence to explain GxE (9 disagree/agree statements).