Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Dengue is a prevalent disease affecting 3.5 billion people worldwide. Outbreaks in Bangladesh have highlighted challenges in dengue prevention and control, with children being the most vulnerable to infection. The success of preventive measures depends on community knowledge and collaboration with public health authorities. Understanding the links between knowledge, attitudes, practices (KAP), and dengue dynamics is crucial for developing effective prevention approaches. The project aims to understand KAP's role in preventing and controlling dengue using a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design. The first objective is a scoping review to evaluate the content, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks of KAP studies on dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. The findings will inform the explanatory sequential methods by providing methodological insights about the scoring system's analytical characteristics and the theoretical frameworks' applicability and effectiveness. The second objective is to analyze data from a cross-sectional study to estimate dengue-related KAP in parents and its association with seropositivity in children aged 2 to 12 years in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The analysis examines the different domains of KAP, the scoring system, and the potential relations between the domains, variables, and seropositivity. Lastly, the third objective will be the qualitative phase, which will involve contextualizing the factors influencing KAP in a dengue control and prevention context from the perspectives of local community members. A focus group methodology will be used with parents based on the second objective. The resulting data will be analyzed to generate interpretations that help us better understand the relationships of KAP in the Dhaka context. The project aims to uncover the complex interplay of factors influencing KAP, improve our understanding of its effectiveness, and enhance its utilization in arbovirus research and public health practice.