ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that community involvement can engender more effective health planning, and that different communities and people can be engaged in different ways and at different levels. Strategies for community involvement, ranging from information sharing to community development, community action and empowerment, are outlined. The chapter uses the term ‘community’ rather than ‘consumer’. It refers to communities of interest, but recognises that the term ‘community’ has many different meanings. Community involvement in health planning refers to a range of activities which provide communities of interest with opportunities to participate in the development and evaluation of health plans. A much-debated question is whether the involvement of communities in health planning is ‘token’ or ‘real’. For health planners, community involvement can add a personal and qualitative dimension to plans which otherwise may rely on quantitative data alone. The main risk of community involvement for health planners is that it is time-consuming, unpredictable and uncontrollable.
