¶ Guidance Documents
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¶ Global Task Force on Cholera ControlCholera Outbreak Response Field Manual “Community engagement is a process of including at-risk and affected communities in the cholera control response throughout the process, from planning and surveillance to implementation and monitoring. It promotes and facilitates community ownership in the response.” Ending Cholera: A Global Roadmap to 2030 “Through interventions like robust community engagement, strengthening early warning surveillance and laboratory capacities, health systems and supply readiness, and establishing rapid response teams, we can drastically Interim Guiding Document to Support Countries for the Development of their National Cholera Plan “The engagement of populations is critical for the prevention of cholera and to ensure quick response to outbreaks when they occur…This can be done through strategies that span across health promotion, social mobilization, risk communication and behaviour change communication…Community engagement should be embedded into all the pillars of the NCP.” Cholera Outbreak Response - Section 5: Risk Communication and Community Engagement “Outcomes of effective community engagement are foremost about community ownership of the response and include increasing trust, confidence and cooperation with response teams, community feedback and uptake of preventive practices.” What influences community engagement and HSS interventions for cholera in LMICs? A scoping review “Community engagement facilitators and barriers: trust building and social cohesion. Strong governance and capacity adaptation facilitated health system strengthening while community representatives and civic structures enabled community participation and empowerment. Stigma, communication strategies targeting personal characteristics, poor leadership, interfering socio-political factors and conflict acted as barriers to both concepts…” |
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¶ WHOCholera Prevention and Control “Acknowledging that cholera, as a disease of epidemic potential…URGES Member States…to strengthen community involvement, social mobilization in cholera prevention, early detection, household water treatment and storage, and other related water, sanitation and hygiene response activities.” Cholera Vaccines: WHO Position Paper “Appropriate treatment of people with cholera, implementation of clean water and sanitation and community mobilization should remain the principal control measures during ongoing epidemics.” |
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¶ OxfamCholera Outbreak Guidelines: Preparedness, Prevention and Control “During fast-spreading outbreaks, efforts to undertake community public health education are often late and haphazard. With very little community engagement, all the efforts to combat the outbreak are left to participating organizations and governments.” An Introduction to Community Engagement in WASH “Information and communication are at the heart of community engagement. Individuals and communities will need practical information, communicated clearly in the local language, to understand their entitlements and to help them make informed choices.” |
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¶ UNICEF“Community engagement aims at strengthening the capacity of communities to identify their own issues and development needs, assess their options and take action, including the ability to assess the impact of their actions and to analyse their capacity gaps. A variety of community-based communication channels - including courtyard meetings, local level dialogues with service providers, social mappings and action plans, community-based entertainment programmes, community radios and other local media channels and religious groups can be used to empower people for meaningful participation and to create demand for quality services.” |
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¶ IFRCCompendium of Hygiene Promotion in Emergencies “Community participation and engagement processes listen to and enable different community groups to influence WASH programme decisions. Community engagement increases programme effectiveness by recognising and harnessing the communities’ capacities, needs and priorities and, ultimately, by empowering them.” |
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¶ Social Science in Humanitarian Action PlatformSocial Science Lessons Learned from Cholera Epidemics “Cholera is not principally defined by behaviours, indeed behaviours are a product of poverty and inequality linked to deficits in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure.” |