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Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power

The concept of health committees has been promoted as an effective mechanism for assisting communities to realize their health rights. These committees tend to be formal structures made up of representatives from local government, health facilities and communities. Much of the attention has focused...

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Main Author: Hasson, Marion
Other Authors: Colvin, Christopher J
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Public Health and Family Medicine 2016
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access_status_str Open Access
author Hasson, Marion
author2 Colvin, Christopher J
author_browse Colvin, Christopher J
Hasson, Marion
author_facet Colvin, Christopher J
Hasson, Marion
author_sort Hasson, Marion
collection Thesis
description The concept of health committees has been promoted as an effective mechanism for assisting communities to realize their health rights. These committees tend to be formal structures made up of representatives from local government, health facilities and communities. Much of the attention has focused on identifying strategies and interventions to strengthen health committees as vehicles for achieving the right to health and the focus has been on educating, raising awareness, training and policy advocacy. However, it is important to understand what participation looks like on the ground and to take in to account the day-to-day challenges and obstacles that health committees as a vehicle for community participation; interacting with stakeholders; and getting support from health facility managers and staff. These factors impact on the health committees 'ability to facilitate and support community participation, yet they are driven by power dynamics and human interactions and relationships. Little attention has been paid to these dynamics, which play an important role in meaningful community participation at grassroots. The Power Cube framework was used to explore the multiple dimensions of power that hinder or enable the health committees' ability to support the community to realize their right to health. The Power Cube framework allowed for an investigation of how power dynamics are perceived by a particular group, as well as providing for the comparison of different social, economic and political context. It enabled a comparison with different contexts where there are policies for supporting the community participation in health but implementation has been difficult it in practice.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:48:33.331Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2016
publishDateRange 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher Department of Public Health and Family Medicine
publisherStr Department of Public Health and Family Medicine
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20369 Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power Hasson, Marion Colvin, Christopher J Swartz, Alison Public Health The concept of health committees has been promoted as an effective mechanism for assisting communities to realize their health rights. These committees tend to be formal structures made up of representatives from local government, health facilities and communities. Much of the attention has focused on identifying strategies and interventions to strengthen health committees as vehicles for achieving the right to health and the focus has been on educating, raising awareness, training and policy advocacy. However, it is important to understand what participation looks like on the ground and to take in to account the day-to-day challenges and obstacles that health committees as a vehicle for community participation; interacting with stakeholders; and getting support from health facility managers and staff. These factors impact on the health committees 'ability to facilitate and support community participation, yet they are driven by power dynamics and human interactions and relationships. Little attention has been paid to these dynamics, which play an important role in meaningful community participation at grassroots. The Power Cube framework was used to explore the multiple dimensions of power that hinder or enable the health committees' ability to support the community to realize their right to health. The Power Cube framework allowed for an investigation of how power dynamics are perceived by a particular group, as well as providing for the comparison of different social, economic and political context. It enabled a comparison with different contexts where there are policies for supporting the community participation in health but implementation has been difficult it in practice. 2016-07-15T11:20:02Z 2016-07-15T11:20:02Z 2016 Master Thesis Masters MPH http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20369 eng application/pdf Department of Public Health and Family Medicine Faculty of Health Sciences University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Public Health
Hasson, Marion
Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
title_full Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
title_fullStr Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
title_full_unstemmed Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
title_short Leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights : the role of power
title_sort leveraging community participation through health committees to achieve health rights the role of power
topic Public Health
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20369
work_keys_str_mv AT hassonmarion leveragingcommunityparticipationthroughhealthcommitteestoachievehealthrightstheroleofpower