Community Health Clubs
January 6, 2008 – 1:54 pmCOMMUNITY HEALTH CLUBS ARE APPROPRIATE FOR THE COMMUNITY BECAUSE THEY…
- Develop a whole ‘culture of health’, not just a few good practices
- Reduce communicable diseases through good home hygiene
- Modify habitual, detrimental hygiene behaviour through group consensus
- Build a ‘common unity’ of purpose within community
- Initiate a Community Based Organisation useful for all development
- Are sustainable by communities after exit of donors
- Promote creative problem-solving with participatory activities
- Ensure informed decision making through participation
- Break the ‘Cycle of Poverty’ and promote local industry
- Use positive traditional values of consensus to effect change
- Empower women in particular to become confident
- Meet the need created by intellectual starvation
- Provide support for disadvantaged and terminally ill
- Attract other donors looking for well organised communities
COMMUNITY HEALTH CLUBS ARE…
Voluntary community based organisations (CBOs) open to men and women of all ages, income and educational levels. CHCs consist of between 50-150 dedicated members who have joined together in order to upgrade their knowledge on health-related issues and hygiene practices with a view to improving their own family’s health. The clubs have no political or religious affiliations and are formed specifically for eradicating communicable diseases in their community and area. Ideally, most households within an area (community, village, district, municipality) are represented in this forum and there is no charge for membership. Health Clubs usually have their own executive committee, voted in every year, a constitution and bank account. Whilst in the first years they tend to focus only on physical health issues, their activities usually expand into many other areas to improve the quality of life of their members. Health in its broadest sense is improved, including mental and spiritual well being, which comes from empowerment through a sense of purpose, achievement and material security.
Community Health Club in Zimbabwe
MEMBERS OF COMMUNITY HEALTH CLUBS…
In the first phase, members meet weekly over a six month period to discuss different health topics. The sessions last one to two hours and cover at least 20 different topics related to health and hygiene. The health topics are identified by the community and programme managers and are listed on the membership cards that issued to each member. Typically, the facilitators use participatory activities to encourage active participation and enable members to find their own solutions to common problems. Each week members are encouraged to make changes within their own household in terms of upgrading their facilities and improving their hygiene practices. In the second phase, water and sanitation programmes are implemented, which are followed by other economic and social activities. These can include adult literacy, financial management training, skills training, home based care, and any other development initiative that the club wants to pursue.
CHC Membership Card
CLUBS MEET EVERY WEEK FOR SIX MONTHS BECAUSE…
A weekly meeting enables each topic to be dealt with separately and in depth, allowing enough time for discussion and diffusion of the messages between meetings. Each week, key messages from the past week are systematically reinforced by club members, ensuring that within a few months all members share a common understanding about health issues. An analogy can be made to taking vitamins to improve health: ‘Little but often’ is more effective than one large dose. A six month period of weekly meetings also enables enough time for all members to organise themselves effectively prior to water and sanitation programmes, so that the benefits of safe water and sanitation are not undermined by poor home hygiene. Club members are then well equipped to manage water and sanitation programmes themselves and have a reliable and democratically elected leadership.
HEALTH EDUCATION IS USED AS AN ENTRY POINT BECAUSE…
The advantage of offering only knowledge (software) in the preliminary stage is that learning can be multiplied to all households without budgetary constraints. This therefore eliminates competitive jealousies that so often hamper ‘hardware’ programmes that offer physical improvements to infrastructure. The provision of hand-pumps or latrines often cause division within communities as each household scrambles for the benefits, creating a problem of ‘limited good’ (not enough benefits to go around). By starting with knowledge dissemination, a fair system of distribution develops, which is then managed by the club members who ensure that only those who have completed all the health sessions benefit from the ‘inputs’. This has repeatedly proven to be non divisive strategy that can also block high-jacking of project benefits by local elites.
