Reimagining malaria: five reasons to strengthen community engagement in the lead up to malaria elimination. (December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Whittaker, Maxine; Smith, Catherine
• Is Part Of: Malaria journal. Volume 14:Number 1(2015)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 6
• Publication Date: 2015-12
• Subjects: Community engagement -- Community participation -- Collaboration -- Malaria elimination; Malaria -- Periodicals; 616.9362
• DOI: 10.1186/s12936-015-0931-9
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1475-2875

Abstract

Abstract Although community engagement has been recognized as an important element of public health since the Alma Ata declaration, in practice community engagement has played a marginal role within malaria control programmes. As more countries move toward elimination, malaria elimination programmes will need to reimagine malaria in a number of ways. An important element of this will be to re-conceptualize and better strategize community engagement, which will become increasingly important for programme success as countries near elimination. This commentary intends to begin a conversation on re-imagining community engagement in an elimination setting, by outlining five ways that community engagement should be strengthened and re-strategized in the lead up to malaria elimination.