Lessons from Community Participation in Health Programs

Running head: Literacy Workbook 1
Assessment 1: Literacy Workbook
Lessons from Community Participation in Health Programs
(Author’s name)
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Literacy Workbook 2
Lessons from Community Participation in Health Programs
The 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration recommended that community participation in matters
related to health services should be encouraged across the globe as it promotes the health and
wellness of individuals, families, and communities. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), community participation is the involvement of individuals in community health
programs and projects in order to solve their own problems. Community participation can take
place during activities such as needs assessment, planning, mobilizing, training and
implementing(Rifkin, 2009). From the article, community participation can be difficult due to
various reasons. The first reason is due to the fact that most health programs are dominated by
the bio-medical paradigm as the primary planning tool making community participation as an
intervention. Secondly, the use and roles of the community health workers have not been well
understood by many people making them less active(Rifkin, 2009). The last challenge is lack of
proper programs that demonstrate how community participation can really work. However,
despite these challenges, community participation has proven to have positive impacts in terms
of community health, especially in low economic areas.
Community participation is one of the major principles of primary health care as
advocated by WHO. This principle reflects social justice in essence that all individuals have the
right to be involved in making decisions that affect their lives especially matters related to health.
Therefore, community participation is one of the key determinants of health that allows
individuals and their families to set boundaries and limits of how their health should be. In
addition, people are more likely to respond and use health services positively if they were
involved in determining how those services should be delivered. This, in turn, will lead to
positive outcomes on the matters related to diseases prevention, health promotion, and reduction

Literacy Workbook 3
in mortality and morbidity rates. Active participation of individuals in planning and making
decisions about health resources allocation and utilization makes people gain trust to health
services provided thus they are able to seek medical and non-medical advice from the healthcare
professionals at ease.
Other than that, people tend to change risky health behaviors when they have been
involved in deciding how those changes might take place. Most people tend not to follow
instructions that were made in their absence. For instance, involving the community on
discussions about avoiding junk food rather than just asking them not to take can improve
people’s perception and increase understanding of the risks involved. Therefore, active
community participation allows individuals to adapt to advantageous healthy activities as
compared to communities who just go to the hospital when sick. This, in turn, promotes diseases
preventions and reduce diseases cost burden.
In addition, community participation allows individuals to gain skills, information, and
experience that make them improve their own lives and be able to challenge social problems and
the government where needed. Through community participation, people are able to receive
health education concerning basic home infection control strategies and skills like proper hand
hygiene and proper use of toilets. In addition, individuals are able to learn about the current
trends of diseases control and prevention strategies available, air their views and also form part
of the implementation strategies. Community participation allows individuals to experience
different circumstances in health care, therefore, becoming the witnesses of various scenarios
making them be able to make judgments and challenge the government and other social systems.
People who actively participate in issues affecting their health have an upper hand in determining