insights Brief for Covid Response In Indonesia

Understanding people’s attitudes and behaviour towards hand washing and healthcare is more important than ever before. Check out our full brief about how insights from ethnographic approaches can help.

A baby chick walks around near a baby and food in a researcher's household in Central Kalimantan. In our studies we have seen that it is common for people to eat and prep food in common spaces including floors, and that animals are often able to roam freely including while food is being eaten or prepared.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hit low income countries – and specifically the poorest people within these countries – the hardest. Governments, UN Agencies and development programmes need to react both quickly and effectively to prevent the worst from happening. Global public health programmes have taught us that the best health policies and programmes are those which are evidence-based. This has already proven imperative during this crisis, as people are being asked to dramatically alter their daily lives in order to keep themselves and those around them safe.

At Empatika we know that, for example, government messaging through WhatsApp groups and on Facebook is not sufficient to promote behaviour change, even for practices as simple as washing hands. There is ample evidence from our immersion research that such messages are often ignored and that people’s understanding of health, hygiene and cleanliness is needed to support change.

Why do some health behaviour change programmes work and others do not? Our immersion-based research provides insights into people’s everyday lives and allows us to consider what people say and what they do, within their own reality. By living with families in over 75 rural and urban locations in Indonesia, we have gathered insights that can be used to address public health challenges. These details are essential to tailoring messages and approaches to address the drivers of key health behaviours, like hand washing, breast feeding, or health seeking practices.

Social distancing and travel restrictions limit the options available to collect up-to-date information on how people are responding to the pandemic. However, Empatika’s extensive experiential insights gathered over more than six years may help inform responsive interventions. This includes a network of families across Indonesia with whom we have lived and can communicate with remotely to assess behaviour change and community responses to the crisis. We hope to be able to share these insights and their implications to support policy makers and programmes to design the most effective interventions and forms of support possible to help communities get through the pandemic.

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See our page on COVID-related insights for more information along with key insights and implications relevant to COVID-19 responses and policy in Indonesia.