Table 1 Community engagement with marginalized populations: Desired features* and WP2 efforts

Diversity of communities

'Within budget, time, and other imposed constraints, we were able to consult a diverse set of communities, encompassing indigenous populations, rural poor, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, LGBT individuals, refugees, migrants, older adults, and youth (among others) in different geographic regions of the world.

'Consultations with urban populations, outside of Africa, were limited, and more were planned. For example, a planned consultation with slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was precluded due to political unrest at the time.

'Several consultations included a particular focus on women, especially in Asia and the Pacific.

Inclusion of highly marginalized populations

'All hubs sought to include highly marginalized populations in the consultations, including the development of a protocol for this very purpose in Guatemala, as well as for several of the highly marginalized groups in Uganda, namely LGBT individuals, people with disabilities, older persons, and post-conflict communities. For the most part we believe we succeeded, though in several of the communities, particularly where consultations were not linked to ongoing processes, we can be less certain of this (notably the Australian context).

Community participation at early stage of consultations

'The specific mandate of the Go4Health project addressed terms set by the European Commission as funders, limiting the potential to engage community members in the design of the project or the research tools. Community views on the post-2015 health development goal(s) were central to WP2. WP2 is committed to ensuring community voices and perspectives are heard, and remain responsive to community requests regarding feedback and ongoing representation and interaction.

Opportunity for all participants to have their say

'We strove in all our consultations to ensure that everyone could have a say. This included holding separate focus groups for LGBT individuals in Uganda, as discrimination made it unlikely that participants could speak out in a more open forum.

'To foster participation in Asia, we held separate consultative sessions with specific populations within the community, in particular males and females from different age groups, including older persons, adults of reproductive age, and adolescents.

Findings shared and checked with community

'We shared findings with communities where funding enabled us to return to communities once each hub had analyzed the findings. This was possible in about half of the communities, in particular, most of those in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and the Philippines.

Link to ongoing processes and advocacy

'Links to ongoing processes varied significantly by region, largely determined by the extent of already existing relationships with the communities. These were deepest in Guatemala, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

'While less connected to advocacy, the connections between BRAC University and the BRAC NGO will enable our Asian hub to discuss findings with relevant members of the BRAC NGO. This will enable the consultations in Asia, some of which were with communities that received services from BRAC, to affect the services they receive from and their interactions with BRAC.

Link to national processes

'In several countries, particularly those in Africa, as well as the Philippines, it has been possible to facilitate participation of communities we consulted into national dialogues on the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. For example, in Uganda national processes were also linked not only to the post-2015 process, but also to citizen participation in health through Health Unit Management Committees and annual community dialogues for health to inform the budgeting process.