The OUCRU Dengue group was planning a number of community-based studies and needed to gauge the level of interest of community members to participate in such studies. The aim of this engagement project was to learn what the general public knows about dengue, its transmission in the community, and OUCRU’s research.

We collaborated with the Preventative Medicine Centre (PMC) in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City to interview 30 community members and conduct discussion groups with 2 groups of adults and 1 group of children. It helped us to learn what people knew about dengue research in HCMC and to identify factors motivating or demotivating people in their decisions to participate in local studies involving healthy community members. We also learned about what the public knows about dengue and its transmission in the community, and their views on the most effective means of communication with the public.

Engaging with the community in this way was a challenging but rewarding experience. This project helped us to understand how difficult it is to conduct a study in the community. With challenges from the Hospital for Tropical Diseases ethics committee, we were not able to complete the project, but we did gain enough information, and build confidence from this experience to develop a community-based study: “Active surveillance of Zika virus and other arbovirus infections in Aedes mosquitoes and humans in HCMC”. This study (46DX) ran well seeing further collaboration with PMC HCM and a number of district-level offices.