GCRF_NF345 Tackling Covid19 through co-production: engaging Brazilian vulnerable communities in facing the consequences of pandemics

There is a long history of disconnection and lack of trust between vulnerable communities (slums and favelas) and public authorities in Brazil, due to diverse reasons, including failures in service delivery (e.g., sanitation, education, health), overuse of violence by the police force, and the presence of militias (parastatal power). Many social interventions for COVID-19 prevention and control require co-operation from citizens to be effective. Local communities and their local leaders know their daily needs, their areas, and the social environment better than the government. To cope with COVID- 19, and similar future crises, members of the vulnerable community need to be engaged as part of the solution, and given voice. Our proposal aims to enact co-production with members of these communities and municipal councils. Such councils are already established all over the country. The project will promote an exercise on co-production to design tactics and solutions to prepare neighborhoods for facing future interventions, and in particular vaccine delivery (SDGs goals 3, 10,11,16). Such co-production space would open up opportunities to share information, give voice to local leaders and community members. It is about increasing resilience, reducing social vulnerability, rebuilding trust, through co-production to cope with pandemic outbreaks. The process includes four stages: (i) identification of "successful collective strategies" in vulnerable areas of two Brazilian capital cities (Belem and São Paulo), looking at the determinants of such action, by interviews, (ii) extending the understanding through an extensive survey to others communities from the same cities, (iii) developing a mobile application to create a co-production milieu supporting people to jointly act with municipal councils, (iv) rolling out the initiative to others urban areas disseminating the results.