Parenting Response with Offline Technology to End COVID-associated Trauma ("PROTECT")

由于经济动荡、学校关闭、封锁和精神健康困扰以及无法获得面对面的支持服务，与covid - 19相关的虐待儿童行为已成为一场长期危机。这项工作的目标是，在2019冠状病毒病期间，通过一个独特的可访问和根据具体情况定制的数字育儿应用程序，向世界上最脆弱的人群提供经证明有效的基于证据的预防虐待儿童资源。这个概念验证项目将在南非和坦桑尼亚对我们的测试版“ParentApp”数字计划进行前后测试和定性试点，这两个国家的新冠肺炎发病率飙升，疫苗接种率较低。如果成功，世卫组织和联合国儿童基金会承诺将与全球南方各国政府一起扩大该计划。远程分娩是一个具有成本效益的可行选择，ParentApp是世界上第一个离线访问，低数据育儿应用程序；唯一的开源数字育儿项目；也是唯一为低资源环境设计的数字节目。该项目将在坦桑尼亚和南非测试ParentApp的可行性和初步有效性，根据研究结果进行改进，并让国家和全球利益攸关方参与进来，支持将研究成果大规模转化为创新。我们将通过：收集用户和实施者对ParentApp的相关性、可接受性、满意度和可用性的反馈；与国际和政府战略合作伙伴接触，并与非政府组织合作，了解如何在其活动中实施、交付和使用ParentApp；通过在测试后立即评估该方案对主要和次要结果的影响，生成定量和定性数据，以测试对目标结果的初步有效性。这一建议通过在数字暴力预防方面建立新的证据基础，提供了产生巨大社会影响的突破性潜力。

COVID-associated child abuse has become a chronic crisis through the intense stressors of economic upheaval, school closure, lockdown and mental health distress, alongside the inaccessibility of in-person support services. The objective of this work is to deliver proven-effective evidence-based child abuse prevention resources, to the world's most vulnerable populations during COVID-19, through a uniquely accessible and context-customised digital parenting app. This Proof of Concept project will conduct pre-post testing and qualitative piloting of our beta version "ParentApp" digital programme in South Africa and Tanzania: two countries with surging COVID rates and low vaccination coverage. If successful, the WHO and UNICEF have committed to scaling up the programme with national governments across the Global South. Remote delivery is a cost-effective feasible alternative, and ParentApp is the world's first offline-accessible, low-data parenting app; the only open-source digital parenting programme; and the only digital programme designed for low-resource settings.This project will test the feasibility and initial effectiveness of ParentApp in Tanzania and South Africa, to make improvements based on findings, and to involve national and global stakeholders to support the translation of research into innovation at scale. We will do this by: gathering feedback from users and implementers on the relevance, acceptability, satisfaction and usability of ParentApp; engaging with international and government strategic partners and implementing NGOs to understand how ParentApp can be implemented, delivered and used in their activities; generating quantitative and qualitative data to test initial effectiveness on target outcomes by evaluating at immediate post-test the effect of the programme on primary and secondary outcomes.This proposal offers ground-breaking potential for massive societal impact through building a new evidence-base in digital violence prevention.