Building an Academia-Community-Government Partnership in the early phase in Japan to respond to the 2022 mpox outbreak

Background:

Since an outbreak of mpox cases in individuals without a history of overseas travel was reported in the United Kingdom in May 2022, cases have continued to occur, resulting in an unprecedented outbreak, with 79,411 cases reported worldwide from January 1 to November 13, 2022. The World Health Organization took this situation seriously and declared the situation a "situation of public health concern" on July 23, 2022 after an emergency committee meeting. In Japan, the first case of infection was reported on July 25, 2022 and seven cases were reported up to November 15, 2022.

Program background:

A community engagement approach has been applied to prevent the spread of mpox in Japan. Although anyone can be infected with mpox, the epidemiology of the current outbreak suggests that the infection may have spread within the gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM) sexual network, so we initiated communication with the gbMSM community. It was logical to build a partnership with community-based organizations (CBOs) with rich experience in HIV and sexually transmitted infection awareness activities, including the gbMSM community.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

Twelve meetings attended by representatives from academia (National Institute of Infectious Diseases and National Center for Global Health and Medicine), CBOs, and the government (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and Tokyo Metropolitan Government) were held from June 7 to November 1, 2022. The text of the meeting minutes was qualitatively analyzed using MAXQDA 2022 (VERBI GmbH, Berlin, Germany).

Conclusions:

The topics extracted were preventative measures, raising awareness, partnership, stigma against and/or within men who have sex with men, anxiety, privacy, financial cost, consultation, and vaccination. Symptoms, epidemiology, and concern about stigma were often discussed during the first half of the proceedings, whereas vaccines and anxiety in general, privacy, and financial costs were often discussed during the second half of the proceedings.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Building partnerships among organizations with government support will enable knowledge transfer and trust if there is staff turnover and will enable a system that can respond timeously when crises occur. This will also enable the development of a system that can respond quickly in times of crises. By maintaining an ACG partnership, we are creating an environment that will allow us to respond immediately in the event of future public health crises affecting vulnerable communities.