Most health care happens in the home and in the community, throughout the course of every day. Households and communities make health care choices around food and nutrition, water and sanitation, and use of preventive and curative health services. Households make the first diagnosis of illness, assess the severity and likely outcomes, select among available providers and treatment options, and procure and administer treatments. Their actions are influenced by their beliefs and cultural practices about health care, their supporting and influential relationships within the community and wider society, and the economic and geographical barriers to access the formal health system. Having accurate information and health services available at the community level from trusted peers and community institutions enables households and communities to be able to better protect and maintain their health.
A community health approach is the only feasible way to bring culturally-sensitive health information and basic services to the many millions of people who currently do not have access to them. Many children and women fall ill from preventable or easily treated causes that do not require doctors or hospitals. Their lives could be saved by training, equipping and deploying community health care workers who can deliver basic health care. These health workers, who live in or near the communities that need help most, are a powerful first line of defense against illness and death. Community management of local health facilities provides the next line of defense, ensuring that clinic services are high quality, culturally appropriate and meet the needs of its clients. And finally, community referral systems and counseling ensures people with severe illnesses have access to hospitals.
How does a Community Health approach work?
A community health approach works in tandem with the government, focusing on improving care in the household and community, so that highly trained health facility workers can focus on emergency and difficult cases. A community health approach enhances community structures and expertise for health, adapts to community health needs, involves the community in caring for its citizens, esp. children, and builds bridges between the community and the government health services so that they are perceived as a more valuable community resource. This integrated approach, working with and through the community, keeps children, mothers, and families at the center of attention, not the disease or condition.
A community health approach enables communities to dialogue, debate, and negotiate on health issues directly affecting them based on local data.
What is our Community Health Model?
Our community health model follows those five elements defined by the World Health Organization for achieving better health for all:
• reducing exclusion and social disparities in health
• organizing health services around people's needs and expectations
• integrating health into all sectors
• pursuing collaborative models of policy dialogue
• increasing stakeholder participation
Our community health model involves communities in partnerships in a number of different ways to address the health needs of its households. It strives to:
• improve partnerships between health facilities and the communities they serve through formation and strengthening of community governance groups.
• increase appropriate and accessible health care and information from community-based providers through training of community health treatment workers and support of private providers and local pharmacies.
• promote key family practices critical for child health and nutrition by training and supporting peer support groups (such as grandmothers groups, mothers groups, breastfeeding support groups, etc.), conducting outreach education campaigns through community events, or training community resource persons to provide individualized health education and counseling especially to vulnerable families within the population.
• involve other community institutions and champions such as local government, community information systems, schools, religious leaders, water and sanitation services, agriculture cooperatives to engage in health education and planning.