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Global concern regarding mosquito-borne disease emergence and re-emergence has driven the development of citizen science mosquito surveillance initiatives. Although these initiatives have shown great potential to assist local health authorities, ensuring outcomes are translatable to improved public health policy and practice remains challenging. Here we present a summary of citizen science mosquito surveillance programs worldwide, their focus, strategies, and outcomes, with a view to how best to apply this approach in their local areas. A scoping review of studies and reports was conducted through systematic search on electronic databases (Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar), grey literature, and other documents listed in the references of selected articles. A total of 33 citizen science studies included in this review described 29 citizen science mosquito surveillance projects operating in 16 countries, besides three programs with wide geographic coverage. The selected programs focused on different strategies and methods according to their local and national contextual needs. The majority of the programs reported being free or low in cost, and amenable to participants. Also, citizen scientists valued the opportunity to actively contribute to a scientific activity in which they saw value. Local and national programs have been successful in involving the broader public and yielding data on mosquito populations. However, to ensure the best public health outcomes, sustainability, and scalability, there is a need to continue engaging with stakeholders, including community members, researchers, public health agents, industry, and policymakers, and to bridge existing collaborations across different sectors.
Sousa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.