Prepare To Mobilize

Sources of information

As a practical matter, there are two general sources from which you can obtain information about the health issue and the community: documents of one sort or another and interviews with informants, such as community members and leaders, NGO staff, government officials, health workers, and anyone else familiar with the issue or the community.

Examples of the first source, documents, typically include the following:

• General resources (books, maps, reports) about the political, economic, and social characteristics of the country, region and area in which you are planning to work. Bookstores, university libraries, and some Ministries sell these items; organizations working in the area may have them; also check with donors and government agencies.
• Health and other statistics from Demographic and Health Surveys,2 national statistics, studies and surveys, PVO/NGO data and reports, facility-based service and coverage data.
• Qualitative and quantitative research studies related to the issue, such as those often done by technical assistance agencies, donors, NGOs, and universities.
• Policy statements from ministries and facilities.

The formal district/municipal and community health services are a good place to start to gather service statistics, coverage rates, mortality data (if available), and other information. But don’t stop there because service statistics may be unreliable and often provide only a part of the complete picture, particularly when service utilization is low. Check with private and nongovernmental organizations that work in the community or have worked there in the past. Review comparative data from studies such as the Demographic and Health Survey (if available), epidemiological and anthropological studies, knowledge/attitudes/practices/behavior studies, and other related studies done by universities or international organizations.

You may decide that you need to carry out some kind of survey to find out more about the community. While you should probably guard against doing anything too elaborate or daunting at this preliminary stage of information gathering, there are a number of survey tools you can turn to if you need such an instrument, including the Situation Analysis,3 Health Facility Assessment Tool,4 cluster surveys, and household surveys. For more information about these tools, see the resource list.

Gathering Information About The Health Issue
Gathering Information About The Community
Initiating contact with the community
What does my information mean? Looking for underlying themes.