Assessing the interactions of people and policy-makers in social participation for health: an inventory of participatory governance measures from a rapid systematic literature review

Social participation, also termed stakeholder voice, is an important component of health system governance. Increased interactions between the community and policy makers could facilitate a more responsive health system that targets the needs of the community better. Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a handbook on social participation that identified five key themes for ministries of health to consider when engaging the input of the community. In this rapid systematic literature review, we aimed to identify quantitative and qualitative measures that have been used to assess aspects of social participation involving people and policy makers. We identified 172 measures from 48 studies from countries in all six WHO regions. These measures were categorized by all five themes from the handbook on social participation and these measures are linked to 27 concepts. This rapid review found that the focus of measures is largely on the existence of participation—be it by the general population or specific vulnerable groups—rather than on the quality of their participation. The measures in this inventory may be useful for ministries of health and other key stakeholders to use when developing methods to assess and encourage social participation in their context. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12939-023-01918-2.