ABSTRACT
Mobile health (mhealth) tools delivered through wireless technology are emerging as effective strategies for delivering quality training, ensuring rapid clinical decision making, and monitoring implementation of simple and effective interventions in under-resourced settings. We share our early experience of developing and deploying the InStrat COVID-19 health worker training application (App) in Ogun State, Western Nigeria where the country's first COVID-19 case was reported. This App was designed to directly provide frontline health workers with accurate and up-to-date information about COVID-19;enable them to quickly identify, screen and manage COVID-19 suspects;provide guidance on specimen collection techniques and safety measures to observe within wards and quarantine centers dealing with COVID-19. The App was deployed in 271 primary health care facilities in Ogun state and a total of 311 health workers were trained to use it. Of the 123 health workers who completed knowledge pre- and post-tests, their average test score improved from 47.5 (+/- 9.4) to 73.1(+/- 10.0) %, P < 0.0001 after using the tutorial. Rapid adoption and uptake were driven largely by public-private sector involvement as well as certification of health workers with reported satisfaction levels of over 95% among those who completed pre- and post-test surveys. Challenges encountered included a lack of universal availability of android phones for frontline health workers, lack of internet access in remote areas and a need to incentivize the workers. The timely deployment of this App targeting primary health care workers, mostly in hard-to-reach areas, obviated the need for conventional didactic training with potential of savings in training costs and time and could be applied to similar contexts.
ABSTRACT
Election infrastructure includes socio-technical systems that are designated as United States critical infrastructure within the Government Facilities sector. Following the 2016 United States' General Election and during the 2020 Presidential Election cycle, election security and the integrity of election processes became a prevalent, national conversation. From the 2019 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report indicating that election systems in all 50 states had been targeted by foreign adversaries to the more recent broadened use of, and concern about, mail-based voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, election integrity is increasingly important. Furthermore, poll workers play a crucial role in elections and election equipment, as they are one of the first lines of defense in systems security. This paper contributes to improving the security of election infrastructure through intentional, targeted, cyber, physical, and insider threat training for poll workers. Specifically, this paper details the engineering design, including pedagogical approach, and deployment of online, election-specific, threat training modules. Results of a System Usability Scale assessment from 44 poll workers indicate the content and online platform are easy to interact with and use. Further, the developed modules were piloted and then deployed in a mid-Atlantic state;participating counties include over 1,900 poll workers who serve nearly 750,000 voters. © 2021 IISE Annual Conference and Expo 2021. All rights reserved.