The architecture and effect of participation: a systematic review of community participation for communicable disease control and elimination. Implications for malaria elimination

Community engagement and participation has played a critical role in successful disease control and elimination campaigns in many countries. Despite this, its benefits for malaria control and elimination are yet to be fully realized. This may be due to a limited understanding of the influences on participation in developing countries as well as inadequate investment in infrastructure and resources to support sustainable community participation. This paper reports the findings of an atypical systematic review of 60 years of literature in order to arrive at a more comprehensive awareness of the constructs of participation for communicable disease control and elimination and provide guidance for the current malaria elimination campaign.Evidence derived from quantitative research was considered both independently and collectively with qualitative research papers and case reports. All papers included in the review were systematically coded using a pre-determined qualitative coding matrix that identified influences on community participation at the individual, household, community and government/civil society levels. Colour coding was also carried out to reflect the key primary health care period in which community participation programmes originated. These processes allowed exhaustive content analysis and synthesis of data in an attempt to realize conceptual development beyond that able to be achieved by individual empirical studies or case reports.Of the 60 papers meeting the selection criteria, only four studies attempted to determine the effect of community participation on disease transmission. Due to inherent differences in their design, interventions and outcome measures, results could not be compared. However, these studies showed statistically significant reductions in disease incidence or prevalence using various forms of community participation. The use of locally selected volunteers provided with adequate training, supervision and resources are common and important elements of the success of the interventions in these studies. In addition, qualitative synthesis of all 60 papers elucidates the complex architecture of community participation for communicable disease control and elimination which is presented herein.The current global malaria elimination campaign calls for a health systems strengthening approach to provide an enabling environment for programmes in developing countries. In order to realize the benefits of this approach it is vital to provide adequate investment in the 'people' component of health systems and understand the multi-level factors that influence their participation. The challenges of strengthening this component of health systems are discussed, as is the importance of ensuring that current global malaria elimination efforts do not derail renewed momentum towards the comprehensive primary health care approach. It is recommended that the application of the results of this systematic review be considered for other diseases of poverty in order to harmonize efforts at building 'competent communities' for communicable disease control and optimising health system effectiveness

Participative Methodology for Local Development: The Contribution of Engineers Without Borders from Italy and Colombia: Towards the Improvement of Water Quality in Vulnerable Communities

Abstract This paper presents a systemic methodology by which engineering is put to use in vulnerable communities through applied technological research and the main results of its application. The methodology presented corresponds to one implemented and designed by two groups of Engineers without Borders in Europe and Latin America, to integrate technical know-how with local context in communities with water problems in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The main results of this methodology are related to the improvement of the living conditions of vulnerable groups thanks to the integration of the communities’ knowledge with engineering know-how, leading to autonomous communities and engineering professors and students learning from real life problems to enrich applied sciences

Examining the Effect of Community Participation on Beneficiary Satisfaction with the work of Water Management Committee in Urban Community-based Operated Water Schemes

Community participation (CP) has become popular in development discourse and practice, particularly in relation to water resource management. Greater involvement of beneficiaries in decision-making and implementation of water management practices is expected to increase efficiency and equity. However, the lingering question remains—Does CP necessarily result in outcomes of greater beneficiary satisfaction? Relatively little is known about the linkage. This article seeks to examine the relationship between community participation and beneficiary satisfaction with the work of the water management committee. Four urban-based community operated water schemes in the city of Kisumu, Kenya, are used as empirical referent. We applied quantitative research methodology by conducting a detailed survey and logistic regression analytic technique to analyze the data. We used seven parameters/indicators to operationalize participation and one to ascertain satisfaction with the work of the water management committee. Our results indicate that five participatory variables correlate with beneficiary satisfaction with the work of the water management committees including provision of labor (p \u3c .05), willingness to intervene against vandalism (p \u3c .05), meeting attendance (p \u3c .05), financial contribution (p \u3c .05) and payments of water bills on time (p \u3c .05). These findings suggest that managers of community water supplies projects together with development partners need to encourage the identified participatory variables as a means of augmenting beneficiary satisfaction and most importantly improving effectiveness/sustainability

Exploring the Meso-level of Agricultural Carbon Finance Projects

Metadata only recordAgricultural carbon schemes are intended to mitigate climate change and provide carbon revenues while facilitating sustainable development. This is accomplished through practices which simultaneously increase yields, improve resilience, and store carbon, such as agroforestry, reduced tillage, and grasslands management. Proper monitoring, reporting, and verification of these activities enable the generation and sale of carbon credits. However, this requires linking smallholder farmers at the micro-level with carbon credit buyers operating at the macro-level. These vastly distinct scales are bridged by intermediaries operating at the meso-level, which influence, incentivize, monitor, and aggregate production decisions made by smallholders. Multiple levels of intermediaries may be involved, often including external initiating agencies, such as non-governmental organizations, as well as local-level units, such as farmer groups or local governance associations. Here, we frame evaluation of agricultural carbon schemes with this three-tiered approach, and describe parameters for appraising participation and power, as well as assessing financial feasibility, verifications and market linkages. This is applied to two case studies: the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project and The Sofala Community Carbon Project.CCRA-8 (Technology Networks for Sustainable Innovation