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

与COVID相关的虐待儿童已经成为一种长期危机，原因包括经济动荡、学校关闭、封锁和精神健康问题，以及无法获得面对面的支持服务。这项工作的目标是通过一个独特的可访问和根据上下文定制的数字育儿应用程序，在新冠肺炎期间向世界上最脆弱的人群提供经过验证有效的循证预防虐待儿童资源。这一概念验证项目将在南非和坦桑尼亚对我们的测试版“ParentApp”数字计划进行事后测试和定性试点，这两个国家的COVID发病率激增，疫苗接种率较低。如果成功，世卫组织和联合国儿童基金会已承诺与全球南方各国政府一起扩大该计划。远程交付是一种具有成本效益的可行替代方案，ParentApp是世界上第一个可离线访问的低数据育儿应用程序，是唯一的开源数字育儿方案，也是唯一为低资源环境设计的数字方案。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，支持将研究转化为规模化创新。为此，我们将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以及实施非政府组织接触，以了解如何在其活动中实施、交付和使用ParentApp；生成定量和定性数据，通过在测试后立即评估该计划对主要和次要结果的影响，测试目标结果的初步有效性。这项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开创性潜力。

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.