Becoming Visible: Tackling the Urban Health Divide in Kawempe Slum, Kampala, Uganda
This pilot project aims to address slum health inequity in three intersecting ways: (1) increase community participation in creating evidence and knowledge about their health needs and express this information more effectively; (2) engage researchers in dialogues about why and how they study the health needs of the urban poor; and (3) engage national health research policymakers in dialogues about increasing health evidence about the urban poor.
The project is running in four parishes in Kawempe Division, Kampala's poorest slum, exploring the potential of increasing community-led research. The project is using participatory research and communication approaches to mobilise slum dwellers involved in two community-based women's groups. They have identified their own health priorities and are piloting ways they can collect and understand information about their health needs, using mobile phones and data visualisation applications. Partners will contrast this information with published research, with particular attention to needs of women and girls. They will engage Ugandan health researchers and health policymakers in dialogues about ways the national health research agenda can better meet the needs of the urban poor. The partners will also engage the media to improve reporting on urban health issues.
Panos and the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS-Uganda) (co-leads) are working with the Makerere Women's Development Association and Tusitukirewamu, two community-based women's organisations working in Kawempe, in Wandegeya, Bwaise I and III, and in Makerere II. HEPS Uganda and Panos London are also engaging with ActionAid Uganda on community-led engagement and Panos Eastern Africa on understanding the role of media on urban slum health issues.
According to organisers, expected outcomes include:
- Communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), researchers, and policymakers will engage in more inclusive ways, which will facilitate the uptake of community perspectives and evidence in addressing urban health needs, taking into account gendered power relations.
- Communities and NGOs working with them will have used new, easy-to-use, affordable methods for researching their own health priorities and communicating what they know among themselves to policymakers, health providers, researchers, and the media.
- Understanding will increase about the structural drivers behind the current invisibility of urban health in the national research and policy agendas.
- Recommendations will be generated about how collaboration and strengthened communication pathways will improve community, research, and policy linkages.
- A larger project will be proposed based on lessons and evidence of the pilot phase.
The project will be completed by June 2013.
Background and context
Panos London has completed a literature review of current health research related to urban slum health in Uganda, with gender-sensitive attention to the type of research and whether or not the community was involved. Panos London and HEPS Uganda will map the current policy context for improving urban slum health services. Panos London and Panos Eastern Africa will analyse how selected media outlets are covering urban slum health or other issues, including topics, voices, angles, and attitudes, using established Panos media survey tools.
Community-based participatory research
HEPS Uganda is engaging with women's community group partners, using participatory dialogues and group exercises, such as photo stories, to establish community priorities and visions for how to improve health and equitable access to services. A small working group of community members, chosen at the first community meeting, are working on developing more stories about urban slum life and health, as well as identifying and exploring priority health issues. The small group will report back to larger community meetings for further dialogue. The working group is collaborating with a technical expert in mobile phone data collection and data visualisation techniques to map and display findings from their exploratory data gathering. If other sources of community health data are available, the groups will explore how they might use these data themselves.
Engagement with health researchers and policymakers
In early 2013, project partners will engage health researchers and health policymakers in discussions about the ways in which health research agendas are set and about attitudes toward participatory research. Community groups will discuss the results of their own research with them.
Engagement with the media
The partners will hold a workshop with media to explore findings from the media surveys and present community-generated findings and promote media-community engagement.
Knowledge sharing regionally and globally
In October 2012, the Kawempe pilot project was selected, after a competitive peer review, to be one of the partners in "Participate: Knowledge from the margins post-2015", a global initiative composed of organisations who are involved in participatory research projects to share knowledge and learning and promote engagement of poor and marginalised populations in the post-2015 MDG dialogues. Participate is convened by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and the Institute of Development Studies, with funding from the United Kingdom (UK) Department for International Development (DFID). The Participate project will focus on increasing the participation of the poor in current post-Millennium Development Goal (MDG) processes - for example, the United Nations (UN) High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Health
Makerere Women's Development Association, Tusitukirewamu, ActionAid Uganda, Panos Eastern Africa; HEPS-Uganda (co-lead); Panos London (co-lead). Funding from the Wellcome Trust.
Emails from Kate Schoenmakers and Beryl Leach to The Communication Initiative on September 25 2012, December 31 2012, and January 6 2013.
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