Engaging with communities can help tackle poverty linked health problems

Description

Communities can provide health authorities with essential information on how people perceive and experience health and risks, and how people engage with health systems in their areas. They can explain why people fail to use antiretrovirals despite their availability, or why domestic violence remains unreported.

More generally, asking communities about their health problems can help explain how social situations shape exposure to risk, which in turn determines health. This is information that is not available from sources such as a country’s vital registration system, which records births and deaths.