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Masunaga, Yoriko, Jaiteh, Fatou, Manneh, Ebrima, Balen, Julie, Okebe, Joseph 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5466-1611, D'Alessandro, Umberto, Nieto-Sanchez, Claudia, de Vries, Daniel H., Gerrets, René, Peeters Grietens, Koen and Muela Ribera, Joan
(2021)
'The Community Lab of Ideas for Health: Community-Based Transdisciplinary Solutions in a Malaria Elimination Trial in The Gambia'. Frontiers in Public Health, Vol 9, p. 637714.
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Masunaga et al.2021.CLIH.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: Community participation in global health interventions may improve outcomes and solve complex health issues. Although numerous community participatory approaches have been developed and introduced, there has been little focus on “how” and “who” to involve in the implementation of community-based clinical trials where unequal distribution of power between implementers and communities pre-exists. Addressing how to achieve community-based solutions in
a malaria elimination trial in The Gambia, we developed the Community Lab of Ideas for Health (CLIH): a participatory approach that enabled communities to shape trial implementation.
Methods: As part of transdisciplinary research, we conducted qualitative research with in-depth interviews, discussions, and observations in 17 villages in the North Bank Region of The Gambia between March 2016 and December 2017. We designed an iterative
research process involving ethnography, stakeholder-analysis, participatory-discussions, and qualitative monitoring and evaluation, whereby each step guided the next. We drew upon ethnographic results and stakeholder-analysis to identify key-informants who became participants in study design and implementation. The participatory-discussions provided a co-creative space for sharing community-centric ideas to tackle trial implementation challenges. The proposed strategies for trial implementation were continuously refined and improved through our monitoring and evaluation.
Results: The CLIH incorporated communities’ insights, to co-create tailored trial implementation strategies including: village health workers prescribing and distributing antimalarial treatments; “compounds” as community-accepted treatment units; medicine distribution following compound micro-politics; and appropriate modes of health message delivery. Throughout the iterative research process, the researchers and communities set the common goal, namely to curtail themedical poverty trap by reducing malaria transmission and the burden thereof. This innovative collaborative process built trust among stakeholders and fully engaged researchers and communities in co-creation and co-implementation of the trial.
Discussion: The CLIH approach succeeded in touching the local realities by incorporating a spectrum of perspectives from community-members and discerning project-derived knowledge from local-knowledge. This process allowed us to co-develop locally-oriented solutions and ultimately to co-establish an intervention structure that
community-members were ready and willing to use, which resulted in high uptake of the intervention (92%adherence to treatment). Successfully, the CLIH contributed in bridging research and implementation.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WA Public Health > Health Administration and Organization > WA 546 Local Health Administration. Community Health Services WC Communicable Diseases > Tropical and Parasitic Diseases > WC 750 Malaria |
| Faculty: Department: | Clinical Sciences & International Health > International Public Health Department |
| Digital Object Identifer (DOI): | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.637714 |
| Depositing User: | Rachel Dominguez |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Jul 2021 13:22 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Jul 2021 13:22 |
| URI: | https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/18451 |
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