Enjoy Life - Keep Good Health Toolkit for Community Dialogues

This toolkit is designed to help guide community dialogues around the prevention and management of childhood illnesses. Produced with support from Malaria Consortium, the toolkit is to be used within a Village Health Team (VHT) programme in Uganda to help community leaders and VHTs facilitate community dialogues. These dialogue sessions bring together community members to discuss critical health issues, share experiences and develop solutions. As stated in the guide, dialogues can be held anywhere that allows for a comfortable and open discussion – such as in school buildings, community centres, places of worship, health centres or under a tree.

The guide outlines ten steps to leading a successful community dialogue, including planning and hosting the discussion, wrapping up by summarising key points for action, and making referrals as needed. The toolkit also provides tips in addition to a series of topic sheets to support discussions, covering community-based health services as well as malaria, diarrhoea, and pneumonia in children.

The toolkit consists of the following chapters:

• What are community dialogues?
• 10 steps to leading a successful community dialogue
• Examples of discussion guides
• Topic sheets
• Action plan and monitoring sheet

The guide formed part of the Enjoy Life - Keep Good Health campaign, which was designed to reach rural communities and caregivers by focusing on 1) marketing the timely and consistent use of VHT services in cases of child sickness (early care-seeking), 2) raising demand for rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria (demand for testing before treating), and 3) promoting the daily use of long-lasting insecticide nets (LLINs) and other illness-prevention key behaviours.

To assist with the discussions, VHTs could also use the visual Enjoy Life-Keep Good Health Flipchart.