Locally led approaches
Locally led, community-based approaches are at the heart of Malaria Consortium’s work. By engaging communities in the design, delivery and monitoring of health services, we ensure interventions are trusted, tailored to local contexts and built to last. Community engagement approaches strengthen health systems from the ground up, improving equitable access to healthcare. This builds resilience in health systems, enabling long-term progress in disease prevention and control.
Social and behaviour change for better health outcomes
Since 2003, we have pioneered best practices and have set standards for innovative social and behaviour change (SBC) approaches. These promote social accountability and build resilience to emerging threats.
Effective SBC can create lasting impact, encourage ownership of health issues and support people whose voices have been ignored. We seek to develop more equitable partnerships involving healthcare providers and those most in need of healthcare. This approach links interventions to existing health systems and community structures to ensure their sustainability and suitability to the cultural context.
In practice: We collaborate with communities to lead and engage in dialogues, filling gaps in health knowledge to develop agency and promote sustainable health-seeking behaviours. We have implemented the Community Dialogue Approach to tackle malaria, antimicrobial resistance, cervical cancer, dengue and neglected tropical diseases, as well as for integrated community case management projects across Africa and Asia. As a frontrunner in inclusive malaria SBC programming, our projects have influenced social norms, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, as well as policy at national and international levels.
Helen Hawkings
Senior Social and Behaviour Change Specialist at Malaria Consortium
Engaging community members to reflect on behaviours, generate insights and take individual and collective action is essential for inclusive, impactful public health programmes. We are guided by the adage ‘do nothing to us, without us.’.
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Overcoming vaccine hesitancy through community engagement
Effective community engagement builds trust — including by helping dispel misinformation — and fosters informed decision-making. These are key to the success of health interventions. In malaria and other vaccine rollouts, locally led dialogue and co-designed, culturally tailored strategies have proved essential in overcoming hesitancy, ensuring communities are not just reached, but meaningfully involved in protecting their health.
In practice: In Mozambique and Uganda, we are supporting communities to mobilise and take action. By taking time to understand the factors influencing vaccination decisions and involving local voices in dialogue and decision making — for example, training trusted community influencers like health workers to communicate effectively with caregivers — we are tackling the spread of misinformation, addressing vaccine hesitancy and creating demand for malaria vaccines.
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Behavioural science for tailored interventions
Behavioural science offers critical insights into how people make health decisions. By understanding motivations, barriers and social norms, programmes can design more effective, people-centred interventions. Applying these principles enhances uptake of services and improves adherence to treatment, resulting in stronger disease prevention and control efforts.
In practice: In Nigeria and Uganda, we are partnering with behavioural science experts, BIT, to address the psychological and social factors that influence insecticide-treated net use, while involving communities in project design to ensure interventions are relevant and effective. By exploring the barriers and motivators for consistent use of nets, we are working to achieve sustained, high-coverage protection essential for malaria elimination.
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Community role models and influencers
The Role Model approach identifies and supports community members practising positive, health-promoting behaviours, enabling them to champion these actions within their communities to drive wider behaviour change. By fostering peer-led engagement and building local trust, role models enhance awareness, encourage early care-seeking, and strengthen the impact of disease control efforts across a range of health challenges. This approach promotes community leadership and ownership, essential for long-term sustainability.
In practice: Malaria Consortium was the first organisation to apply the Role Model approach to control malaria in an elimination context. In Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, it increased mosquito net use, care-seeking practices and knowledge about malaria. We have also supported role models to improve administration of seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) in Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria (through ‘lead mothers’) and Togo. In Ethiopia and Uganda, the efforts of influencers including community leaders, elders and male heads of households have improved understanding and uptake of malaria prevention and control commodities and services.
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Tackling cross-border transmission
Cross-border transmission of malaria presents a significant public health challenge, particularly in regions with high population mobility. Mobile workers, refugees and displaced populations travelling between areas of higher and lower risk may contribute to or become exposed to high levels of malaria transmission. By working directly with these groups and understanding their needs, we can tailor services to them and mitigate the barriers created by differences in healthcare infrastructure, surveillance systems and treatment protocols that might otherwise hinder effective responses.
In practice: We are working with Cambodia’s Ministry of Health to eliminate all malaria species by interrupting malaria transmission in hard-to-reach forests and border regions. Our work focuses on filling gaps in malaria service provision in six provinces in northern Cambodia, targeting remaining malaria hotspots. Trusted community members, often from minority groups who speak local languages, are trained and supported to be mobile malaria workers to reach these populations.
“By focusing on seasonal mobile workers in the Sennay project, we are addressing a critical gap in malaria prevention and control. This initiative not only aims to reduce the malaria burden but also empowers these workers by involving them in shaping the solutions. We are creating sustainable health improvements and ensuring that no one is left behind in this critical fight.”
Dr Chalachew Sisay, Malaria Consortium Ethiopia
Case management
We improve the management of disease and illness through community-based healthcare delivery. Working closely with health structures and authorities, we strengthen referral systems from the community to facility level for priority cases. The integrated community case management (iCCM) approach is a proven, effective intervention. This involves training and building support for community-level health workers to recognise, diagnose and treat common diseases, such as malaria, in members of the community — especially children under five — and refer them to health facilities for further treatment where necessary. We also train local health workers to strengthen case management processes and ensure correct treatments are given.
Click to read more about case management.
