Browsing by Author "Bategereza, Leah"

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Community-networks that facilitate engagement in health research: Ifakara Health Research Institute-Bagamoyo case study
(AAS Open Research, 2021-03-11) Bategereza, Leah; Olotu, Ally; Kamuya, Dorcas
Background: Involvement of communities in the field of health research has been at the forefront of what is considered as ethical conduct of research. A commonly used approach is regular meetings with locally recognized community leaders to consult about research activities, i.e. community engagement. At the Ifakara Health Research Institute (IHI) in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, different approaches to engaging with the community in health research have been used, but there has not been a systematic understanding of the functioning of the community network that is engaged within health research. Methods: To understand the community networks engaged in health research, perceptions of community stakeholders and researchers on the functionality of the community networks was performed. We conducted six focus group discussions with respondents who have participated in IHI research for the past five years and 49 in-depth interviews. Results: Community networks involved in engagement were influenced by the type of research project and kind of participants needed. Different community networks were involved in engagement activities, namely village executive officers, community health workers, hamlet leaders, nurses, doctors and community advisory boards. Approaches used during engagement processes to inform potential participants about the work of IHI and specific studies that are undertaken were useful in passing key information, however, they did not always reach the target population due to having limited levels of interaction with potential participants. Participants and researchers suggested additional ways to engage with the community. Conclusion: There is a need of developing a community engagement unit that would work across projects to support engagement with the community. The unit will maintain continuous engagement with the community and conduct research to understand the relationship between communities we work in and researchers. Funding of this unit could be done through contributions from the core budget, individual’s projects or competitive grant application.
Perceptions and experiences of community-networks that facilitate engagement in health research: Ifakara Health Institute-Bagamoyo case-study
(NM-AIST, 2021-05) Bategereza, Leah
Involvement of communities in the field of health research collectively known as community engagement is considered as ethical conduct of research. At the Ifakara Health Research Institute (IHI) in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, nothing has been documented on how the engagement is being done and what community structures/networks are involved in the facilitation of engagement activities, and what are the systematic functioning of these structures since the formulation of community advisory board (CAB) in 2007. In this study six focus group discussions (FGDs) and 19 in-depth interviews (IDIs) among respondents participated in IHI research for the past five years were performed. Furthermore, focus groups and in-depths interview were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using framework analysis techniques. This study found that; engagement was more likely being influenced by the type of research project and kind of participants needed, different community networks such as village executive officers, community health workers, hamlet leaders, and community advisory boards were the key stakeholders and; community-level public meetings, household visitation and informationgiving sessions at the health facilities were the main approaches used during engagement processes. However, it was found that they did not reach most of the target people due to limited levels of interaction with potential participants, there are no central coordination of the engagement activities at the Institute, different research projects at the same Institute have been approaching these structures separately, little engagement, misunderstanding of the research objectives have been reported in contributing to the participants dropout. This study recommends that there is a need of developing a community engagement unit that would work across projects to support engagement with the community.