Coronabambini - a sequential mixed method evaluation

To support the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)'s pediatric COVID-19 testing and quarantine strategy, the online decision support tool www.coronabambini.ch ("Coronabambini") was developed. The tool was validated by the pediatric testing taskforce of the FOPH and has been integrated with the FOPH corona checker since December 2020. The aims of Coronabambini are to i) assist pediatric patients and their caregivers in decisions around testing and school/daycare attendance, ii) help alleviate the burden of primary care providers in responding COVID-19-related information requests by patients and iii) to support the FOPH's efforts in streamlining testing and public information. Though several institutions have developed online decision support tools for COVID-19, very little is known about the usage of such tools and the compliance recommendations. Hence, a sequential mixed-methods evaluation of Coronabambini, as a specific pediatric tool and as a public health decision support tool at large has been proposed. In this design, quantitative and qualitative data are triangulated and integrated. It is particularly suited for broad and explanatory research questions as required for this project. Based on large data sets already collected through Coronabambini, quantitative follow-up survey of users who provided contact details for research purposes have already been conducted. Results of this survey will inform qualitative data collection. In addition, at the synthesis level, quantitative findings will be understood and explained through qualitative results. Quantitative data collection has already started and is automatically sent to the user when an email address was provided. The quantitative survey contains questions on the reasons for using the tool, compliance with the tool's recommendations, as well as socioeconomic factors. The primary objective of the evaluation is to respond to the following research questions: - How and why is Coronabambini used as an online public health decision support tool? - How does Coronabambini affect decision-making around testing, health-seeking, and practical decisions? - What are factors that influence the usage of Coronabambini (demographic, type of user, socioeconomic factors, digital literacy)? At the same time, the following research questions will be addressed as secondary objectives: - What are barriers to following FOPH's testing and public health recommendations (stigma, access issues, socio-economic factors)? - To explore how caregivers cope with public health measures (e.g. quarantine) in the family setting and the impact of such public health measures on families.