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  • Community Engagement

Community Engagement

Community engagement is a proven social and behavior change (SBC) strategy that has helped people around the world identify and address pressing health issues.[1] According to UNICEF, community engagement focuses on collective or group participation. It empowers communities and their social networks to reflect on and address a range of behaviors, issues and decisions that affect their lives and to become proactively involved in their community's development. Community engagement is a strategy that raises awareness and strengthens the community's capacity to effect change.  

Community engagement helps people improve their own health and living conditions while strengthening and enhancing the community's ability to work together for any goal that is important to its members. The end result of a successful community engagement effort is not simply a “problem solved” but rather the increased capacity of a community to successfully address other needs and desires.

A community engagement approach allows the community to:

  • Develop an ongoing dialogue with health programs
  • Empower themselves to address their own health needs
  • Recognize diversity and equity
  • Work in partnership with program to create locally appropriate responses
  • Be linked to external resources

Like any development approach, community engagement is not a panacea; it is not the answer to every development issue or the right approach for every community. Even within the same community, it may be the right approach for certain health issues but not for others. Under the right circumstances, however, community engagement has been proven to be a powerful tool for unleashing the potential of individuals and communities around the world.

In this Trending Topic we provide tools and program examples for community engagement, as well as some for community mobilization. We invite you to add your own project materials or favorite tools by visiting the upload page.  If you have any questions or comments, please contact the Compass team at info@thecompassforsbc.org.


Footnotes 

[1] From: How to Mobilize Communities for Health and Social Change

References

Carter, Marian, et al. 2015. Community Engagement in Family Planning in the US: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 49:2. Retrieved from: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/34594

Cicatelli Associates, New York State Center of Excellence for Family Planning and Reproductive Services. Community Engagement as a Strategy for Reaching Priority Populations. Retrieved from https://caiglobal.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=879&Itemid=1551

Sharman, Anjana, et al. 2018. Community Education and Engagement in Family Planning: Updated Systematic Review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 55:5. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379718320919 


Banner photo: A sex worker speaks at the All India Conference of Entertainment Workers in Kolkata, India. © 2007 Gopal Bhattacharjee, Courtesy of Photoshare

Resources

  • Tools
  • Examples

Behavior Change Communication (BCC) for Community-Based Volunteers (Toolkit)

This toolkit contains technical materials for training community-based volunteers plus summaries of key guidelines for behavior change communication. While developed as part of a malaria prevention effort, this training guide also covers child health and hygiene, in addition to malaria.

View Resource

Assessing Community Capacity for Change

This handbook is a guide to assessing community capacity for transformative work that leads to health.

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Principles of Community Engagement

This downloadable tool provides public health professionals, health care providers, researchers, and community-based leaders and organizations with both a science base and practical guidance for engaging partners in projects that may affect them. 

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The REPLACE Approach: Supporting Communities to End FGM

The REPLACE project in the EU recognizes that FGM is a social norm and that each community has different belief systems and enforcement mechanisms supporting its continuation.

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Engaging Faith Leaders in Family Planning

In sub-Saharan Africa, a 2006 survey found that people trust faith-based organizations more than they trust their own national governments (Tortora, 2007).

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Community Group Engagement: Changing Norms to Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health

This brief describes the evidence on and experience with community group engagement (CGE) interventions that aim to foster healthy sexual and reproductive health (SRH) behaviors. 

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Faith-Based Engagement in Family Planning

On May 2, 2018, the Woodrow Wilson Center's Maternal Health Initiative hosted a two-panel event in collaboration with World Vision U.S., focusing on the role of faith-based organizations in controlling the HIV epidemic through re

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Essential Considerations for Engaging Men and Boys for Improved Family Planning Outcomes

This resource provides a rationale for why men and boys should be engaged in FP efforts in cooperative ways that improve FP/RH outcomes and facilitate women and girls’ agency.

Download

A Guide to Family Planning for Community Health Workers and their Clients [Flipchart]

This flipchart is a tool to use during family planning counselling or in group sessions with clients. It can: 
  • Help clients choose and use the method of family planning that suits them best
View Resource

Community Mobilization for PAC in Kenya: Evaluation Findings

Kenya

This is a presentation of the evaluation of the Post Abortion Care project in Kenya, 2010-2012.  The evaluation was carried out in 2012.

It includes main findings, photographs from the project, and quotations from those involved.  

Download

Advocacy, Communication, and Social Mobilization Strategic Framework and Implementation Plan [Nigeria]

Nigeria

This strategic framework and implementation plan was created to guide malaria partners in the implementation of advocacy, communication (BCC) and social mobilisation (ACSM) interventions designed to support Nigeria's national malaria control efforts.

Download

Community Conversation Toolkit Discussion Cubes

Materials in this toolkit include a facilitator’s guide, community mobilizer’s cards, roleplay cards, storytelling finger puppets, promotional proverbs and best kept secrets throw boxes, promotional playing cards, and dialogue buttons.

Download

Family Planning Radio Spots

Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigeria

This is a series of demand generation 60-second radio spots for modern FP methods adapted to state-specific contexts and community structures/events. The radio spots are part of a FP campaign in Nigeria.

View Resource

Family Planning IPC Guide

Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigeria

A guide to aid Community Mobilizers (CMs) in facilitating discussions around FP and Childbirth Spacing (CBS) for the adoption of a modern contraceptive method. There is a specific flip chart for Community Dialogue and Compound meeting

 

View Resource

Family Planning Themed Video Clips For Community Mobilization

Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigeria

Adapted FP-focused storylines from a TV serial drama (Newman Street). Screened during community dialogues to an average audience of about 60 persons per session.

Videos are located here and here.

 

How-To Guide for Social Network Diffusion Approaches to Overcome Social Obstacles to Family Planning Use

Benin

The Tékponon Jikuagou consortium prepared this guide to encourage others to adopt the package through social networks as a stand-alone initiative or as a supplement to their ongoing health and development programs in West Africa.

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Islamic Perspectives on Reproductive Health

Nigeria

The first part of the document provides an overview of the reproductive health situation in Nigeria, drawing from national statistics, followed by a brief look at the National Reproductive Health Policy and the Strategic Framework.

Download
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GREAT Community Action Cycle Implementation Guide

Uganda

The Gender Roles, Equality and Transformations (GREAT) Project Community Action Cycle (CAC) Implementation Guide was developed to engage community leaders and mobilizers by facilitating a process that focuses on the relationship between gender inequality, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health outcomes.

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Pragati Games

Nepal

Pragati is a package of nine interactive games developed and refined through robust proof of concept and pilot testing in Nepal. Through game-play and critical reflection questions, they sparked challenging conversations in communities around fertility and social norms that drive birth timing and family size. 

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Male Engagement in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH)

Nigeria

This job aid was developed in Nigeria  to provide information on how men can participate in their family’s health and support their wives/partners during various phases of pregnancy, labor, and infancy/childhood.

View Resource

Expanding Access to Family Planning Services at the Community Level

Uganda

Expanding access to family planning (FP) at the community level has been a priority strategy for accelerating progress toward achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and more specifically, emphasis on community access to FP has emerged as a major goal in sub-Saharan Africa.

View Resource
Telesphore Kabore
Anna Helland

This website is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Breakthrough-ACTION Project, supported by USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, under Cooperative Agreement #AID-OAA-A-17-00017 with the Johns Hopkins University.

Breakthrough-ACTION is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (JHU∙CCP). The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of JHU∙CCP. The information provided on this website is not official U.S. Government information and does not necessarily represent the views or positions of USAID, the United States Government, or The Johns Hopkins University.

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