Paper details

Paper authors	Kimberly Stam
In panel on	What do Practitioners Really Need from Academics? Searching for Best Practices
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

In times of humanitarian crises and adversities, Psychological First Aid (PFA) has increasingly been used to capacitate staff from the region in supporting people who have experienced stressful and difficult events. In order to evaluate the impact of PFA, retrospective research was conducted on PFA roll out during the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and prospective research on learning effect of PFA in healthcare providers. Key elements from this research will inform successful PFA capacity building and evaluation in future humanitarian crises. Findings have been disseminated and discussed with stakeholders at national level and in peripheral health units (PHUs) in six districts. The research has been conducted by academic and humanitarian organisations in Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. This paper focusses on collaboration and inclusive research with reflections from different perspectives of data collectors and health workers from Sierra Leone and of researchers and coordinators from the different organisations in the three involved countries. The paper stresses the value and necessity of involvement and input of practitioners and researchers from the region, contributing to building context and bringing meaning to research results and PFA as a support tool in humanitarian crises. Reflections, lessons learned and emerging best practices for future PFA roll out and research in Sierra Leone will be presented and discussed.

Presented by: Relinde Reiffers, Rebecca Esliker, Kimberly Stam and Leontien Ruttenberg.

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