ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on urban community participation in the delivery of community based primary health and family planning services. It presents a framework for mobilizing urban communities as well as several essential principles and tools for strengthening community capacity to facilitate linkages between community members, health providers and agencies that provide services which normally lie outside the traditional health sector, but which significantly influence the health status of a community. Community based public health, family planning and primary health care (PHC) services cannot exist in isolation. The responsibilities and resources of municipal departments of health vary greatly. However, increasingly with decentralization becoming a common government objective, more authority and resources are shifting to local governments such as municipalities, both for health and other services. Urban communities must develop a clear understanding of precisely the responsibilities and resources at the disposal of their municipal departments of health.
