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Family planning is a vital component of reproductive health that enables individuals to make informed decisions about their fertility and plan for the timing and spacing of their pregnancies. However, marginalized communities, often face significant barriers to accessing family planning information and services, resulting in higher rates of unintended pregnancies and poor reproductive health outcomes. This chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge about knowledge related to family planning among marginalized communities, including the factors that shape knowledge, the implications for reproductive health outcomes, and the strategies for improving knowledge and access to family planning information and services. The review highlights the need for continued research, advocacy, and policy development to ensure equitable access to family planning information and services for all individuals, regardless of their demographic characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of consumer and community engagement in health service planning, quality improvement and programme evaluation in Australia, and key components and importance of a strong suite of tools for achieving effective outcomes.

This paper is a non-systematic review of Australian national, state and territory websites in relation to policy commitment to consumer engagement, best practice framework for consumer engagement and recent project example.

Consumer engagement is a recognised component of the Australian health system. It is reflected in the national and state health policy and is a mandatory requirement of hospital accreditation. The application of co-design principles is gaining increasing popularity in health service planning and programme evaluation. Co-design is an important enabler of patient/community-centred service planning and evaluation; however, on its own it may lead to poorer outcomes. Co-design must occur within a broader systemic framework.

The research identifies a conceptual framework, approaches and tools of value to health service management and planners.

Consumer and community engagements are critical to the development of consumer-centric services. However, this should complement and add value to, not divert attention away from established principles of service planning, continuous quality improvement and programme evaluation. To do so may result in poorer quality health and well-being outcomes, reduced efficiency and ultimately reduced consumer and community satisfaction with services. This paper examines consumer and community engagement within the broader planning and quality improvement framework and practical implications for keeping planning, research and evaluation on track.

Community health clinics serving the poor and underserved are geographically expanding due to changes in U.S. health care policy. This paper describes the experience of a collaborative alliance of health care providers in a large metropolitan area who develop a conceptual and mathematical decision model to guide decisions on expanding its network of community health clinics.

Community stakeholders participated in a collaborative process that defined constructs they deemed important in guiding decisions on the location of community health clinics. This collaboration also defined key variables within each construct. Scores for variables within each construct were then totaled and weighted into a community-specific optimal space planning equation. This analysis relied entirely on secondary data available from published sources.

The model built from this collaboration revolved around the constructs of demand, sustainability, and competition. It used publicly available data defining variables within each construct to arrive at an optimal location that maximized demand and sustainability and minimized competition.

This is a model that safety net clinic planners and community stakeholders can use to analyze demographic and utilization data to optimize capacity expansion to serve uninsured and Medicaid populations.

Communities can use this innovative model to develop a locally relevant clinic location-planning framework.

The purpose of this paper is to determine opportunities, resources, and capacity building supports that enable volunteer capacity to participate in localized health planning processes.

A case study methodology is employed in this study. A range of qualitative research methods including focus groups, individual interviews, observation and document analysis is used to gather detailed data about the experience of the health volunteers. They engage in an in‐depth analysis of this experience. A thematic analysis of volunteer accounts informs the explanation of the case and the study findings.

The development of partnerships between health systems and communities is advocated as a means of enhancing overall community capacity to address priority health concerns, and to reduce escalating health care costs and inequities. The process of building health partnerships is complex, requiring extensive assessment of both health system and community readiness. Health volunteers have many capacities well suited to collaborative activity; these are more likely to find expression when barriers are minimized and facilitative conditions are maximized. The study finds that dialogue is a key mechanism for assessing community and system readiness, and for building trust and mutual understanding in such health partnerships. This case study introduces facilitated dialogue as a mechanism for assessing volunteer readiness and timely capacity building resources and supports, in line with the developmental needs of volunteers. Assessing health system readiness involves consideration of health system goals and definitions of participation, and overall commitment to developing and resourcing this kind of system‐wide change where the outcomes are longer term in nature. This commitment entails training of health professionals in the relevant health promotion knowledge and skills. This extends to mobilizing, nurturing, and supporting volunteer capacity to work with the health system to make informed decisions about the health needs of their community.

A health system perspective on this question should be explored to identify other complex challenges associated with managing this kind of system‐wide change.

The paper provides detailed insights into the experience of health volunteers in a health planning context. These insights potentially inform concrete strategies for assessing community strengths and readiness, and for minimizing barriers to volunteer participation, particularly in a rural context.

The paper provides insights about how health system structure and environmental processes can be adapted to create an environment conducive to community participation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and assess the process undertaken by Capital Health responsible for planning and developing a new primary care centre in an older urban, and demographically mixed neighbourhood in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The approach to the paper is to describe how health centres, if they are to be fully effective in terms of meeting community needs, need more than technical excellence; they also need to fit into the community where they are to be located. Primary care centres, through helping people stay healthy and manage their own health in their own communities, can be an essential antidote to the challenges presented by an aging population. The paper uses the Capital Health initiative as a means of demonstrating how a primary care centre can achieve this objective, in terms of design and physical location, as well as planning process.

The paper describes the process the project planners have developed to enter into dialogue with representatives of the community. The proposed site selected for the clinic was met with some resistance because it was formerly a school built in the 1930s in the middle of a large area of green space and surrounded by mature elms in the midst of a mixed urban residential area. Through an intense two‐way communication process with residents of the area, the plans for the centre are iterative, evolving in such a way that the clinic will not only integrate architecturally and structurally, but better meet the needs of the community it serves.

The paper has practical implications for anyone interested in designing and locating new health centres in already existing urban communities.

Discusses the issues of building a new primary care centre, while preserving precious green space and considering opinions of local residents.

Over the past two decades, Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) has been a pragmatic strategy towards universal Primary Health Care (PHC) in Ghana. However, the ability and capacity of these facilities to deliver quality primary health care remain an illusion as they are still crumbling in myriad challenges. These challenges are translated to the poor-quality services provision and low community utilization of CHPS facilities. The study presents a comparative analysis of three communities in the Kassena-Nankana East Municipality, Ghana.

Using a mixed-method research design, the study gathered and analysed data from 110 households, three community health officers (CHOs) and three community leaders using semi-structured questionnaires and interview guides.

The findings indicated that the facilities do not have the requisite inputs such as drugs and supplies, logistics, appropriate health personnel, good infrastructure, funding support necessary to deliver quality and appropriate healthcare services that meet the health needs of the communities. For the CHPS to realize their full potentials as PHC facilities, it is required that the needed inputs such as logistics, drugs and appropriate staff are in place to facilitate the activities of CHOs.

Due to the limited number of participants and selection of the study communities, the results may generalization. Also, the researchers acknowledged the inability to interview the district level health officials and the Kassena-Nankana Municipal Assembly during the field visits. This could have provided in-depth knowledge on the findings of this research as well as the validation of the results from the communities' perspective. Several attempts were made to contact and interview district-level authorities which proven futile due to the unavailability of targeted respondents. This resulted in limiting the studies at the community level. However, this limitation does not disprove the findings of this study.

The article implications for planning primary health care strategies include a keen assessment of community health needs and institutional management of primary health care facilities, equip PHC facilities with adequate resources such as drugs and appropriate staffing to provide the health needs of the communities.

The paper fulfils the gap in the literature by providing empirical data on how the challenges of primary health care facilities affected the provision of high quality service and how this can affect community’s use of the facilities.

Considers the potential use of operational research for strengthening community participation – terms that have formerly been employed ambiguously or with a variety of meanings. Begins by providing some explanation of “operational research”, identifying specifically those factors which have prompted the development of a “new paradigm” operational research. Of these, considers the need for new practices and particularly the value of operational research adopting practices derivative from participatory research. Outlines development of community operational research as an example of new paradigm operational research; some of the work of the Community Operational Research Unit in the UK is illustrated. Concludes by examining the value of community operational research as a potential tool for strengthening community participation.

This paper reviews the NHS Plan from the perspective of the Government’s wider programme of “modernising” public services. Although broadly focussed, particularly highlights older people. Two dimensions of modernisation are identified. The NHS Plan is seen to be patient‐cited – rather than citizen‐centred. Argues further, that, if the economic, social and environmental causes of ill health are to be addressed more generally and if citizens are to be enabled to live in healthy, sustainable communities, planning for health services should logically be subordinate to planning for health. Health improvement plans should, therefore, be integrated within the wider community strategies for which local authorities are to have lead responsibility. Similarly, as ill health is recognised to be an important aspect of poverty, inequality and social exclusion, there is a strong case for the integration of the regional offices of the NHSE within the wider structure of regional governance. Finally, the personal social services should ensure that the values of social work and social care are not displaced by medical and nursing models which, historically, have shown little understanding of community development processes.

Our lived experiences are complex, dynamic and increasingly connected locally and globally through virtual realities that call for an evolution and responsiveness from the field of architecture education. To ensure future built environments are designed to nurture healing and health, this paper aims to address a critical need in architecture education to integrate knowledge of health and social-behavioral disciplines in students' course work. The authors will outline the process of preparing a new multidisciplinary course on health and the built environment (HBE) at the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University in Baltimore, USA, as an effort to challenge the barriers of discipline-specific pathways to learning in the field of architecture.

The central question is how to develop an active learning pedagogy to foster a multidisciplinary learning environment focused on the “practice” (how to) of human-design-oriented approaches to improve the capability of built and natural environments to promote health and healing. The course intentionally centered on the real-life experiences of students to ground their new understanding of health and well-being fields. The course proposal went through an extensive peer-review process of reviewers from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and other departments at Morgan State University to ensure a balance between health- and architecture-specific curricula with a transdisciplinary approach to understanding complex health issues.

This paper shows the effectiveness of tools and techniques applied in the course to challenge architectural students to integrate various health and behavior perspectives in their designs and to apply health and healing principals to their current and future design projects.

While there are courses in American universities that offer a traditional introduction to health concerns related to the built environment, there is limited focus on the perspective of the design field approach to improve health and healing outcomes.

Improving access and the quality of health services requires community health initiatives. However, in order for such efforts to be successful, there has to be some agreement at the community level as to which community initiatives ought to be pursued. With diversity of population, health disparities, limited resources, and competing needs, agreement is unlikely; instead a negotiated consensus among key stakeholders (community advocates, agency leaders, service providers, and consumers) must be developed. A negotiated consensus takes into account differences and allows for some kind of resolution of these differences in order to achieve a given end. A negotiated consensus is necessary for the identification of common goals, prioritizing these goals, and either seeking funding or utilizing available funding for selected community initiatives. The chapter examines efforts by a regional health care system which fostered community initiatives in four diverse sites. We develop a framework which can guide other community initiatives in health care.