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Informed and involved communities can have a significant impact on health practices and outcomes by providing sites for the dissemination and adoption of positive health-seeking behaviours and caring practices and enabling collective health action to improve quality of services. At the same time, introducing and sustaining community-based health interventions require intensive interactions with local communities and are therefore challenging to develop and scale.
 In India, social and economic development efforts are already heavily invested in creating a variety of community-based structures across diverse political and economic geographies, not only panchayati raj institutions, but also a range of other associations such as self-help groups, mahila mandals and sanghas, cooperatives, village committees, and other organisations and movements. The rapidly growing micro finance sector also provides an important potential community-development system for the integration of health and nutrition-related interventions. As MFIs both deepen and expand their reach, there is an increasing interest in developing lateral linkages to address a range of their clients’ needs, of which health-related care and expenditure is an important emerging concern.
Depending on the context, community structures provide valuable support to CHW programmes, but they can independently provide potentially vibrant spaces for the promotion and dissemination of vital health and nutrition knowledge and action. Moreover, they can also function as platforms for the expression of demand and the assertion of accountability on the health providers operating in their communities. Health strategies that activate such relational resources are therefore likely to be especially effective in negotiating change and are deserving of greater attention and investment.
ICCHN is currently exploring innovative approaches and interventions research in the following key areas related to community development platforms:
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Designing innovative behaviour change communication materials and processes that can be effectively facilitated at the group-level.
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Utilising the systems and sites developed for reaching community groups to deliver specific and appropriate health interventions, including health ‘products’ (such as insecticide-treated bednets and IFA), activities (such as kitchen gardens) and services (for example, immunisation and screening camps).
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Involving community groups and organisations in demand-side linkages, support and accountability roles to improve the provision of essential health and nutrition services. This includes involvement in supporting CHW programmes and strengthening health service delivery and ICDS activities.
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Implementing different partnership models linking health resource organisations and community development systems such that innovations are technically sound, adapted to social and programmatic contexts, and adequately and equitably financed.
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