Institutionalisation of Gender-specific Local and Community Knowledge in Public Health Programmes—A Systematic Review

Community knowledge can be a valuable resource for practitioners seeking to design and implement effective public health programmes. However, incorporating community knowledge into health programmes can be a challenging process, requiring careful planning and continuous engagement with community members, particularly for gender-specific issues. This systematic literature review is an attempt to synthesise the existing literature on this topic, with the aim of identifying notable instances of countries and interventions that have successfully translated community knowledge into public health programmes, keeping a gender focus. This review found relatively little evidence of translational interventions around gender and health that have been subsequently incorporated into national programmes, indicating that governments are yet to use community knowledge in a productive way. Broadly, three types of interventions were found: (a) interventions which were carried out by local organisations based on their knowledge of the community, who then used the results to lobby health ministries to institutionalise new policies or programmes; (b) interventions carried out by government health programmes that collaborated with local organisations to introduce elements of community-based participatory research into the intervention design and (c) interventions by government health programmes where community participation was incorporated by the inclusion of community health workers. While a gender lens was not incorporated into the intervention design in many studies, all the interventions in this review show that health outcomes, perception and beliefs can be impacted using community engagement and involvement.