Co-designing and scaling effective COVID-19 communication strategies for young people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Victoria

The COVID-19 pandemic required governments and the public sector to alter organisational structures to address the complex nature of the challenge – for example by creating portfolio-agnostic and cross-party ‘crisis cabinets’. Similarly, we offer a transdisciplinary approach, in which academic disciplines work beyond their traditional boundaries to create new conceptual and empirical innovations. We leverage frameworks and methodologies from sociology, digital civics, behaviour psychology, and implementation science to generate the new conceptual and empirical knowledge. This knowledge is critical to assist government and other agencies to mitigate the impact of outbreaks via effective communication strategies and approaches that address community needs and support adherence to preventative measures (such as
physical distancing, sanitising, and isolation).