Taking a Pulse on Community Participation in Maternal Health through Community Clinics in Bangladesh

Bangladesh started institutionalising community participation by setting-up community clinics (CCs) during the mid-90 s. This paper presents the genealogy of CCs, the community participation mechanism embedded within CCs, and the case of 54 CCs in Brahmanbaria, through the lens of maternal health. We undertook a desk review to understand the journey of CCs. In 2018, we assessed the accessibility, readiness and functionality of CCs, and a household survey to know recently delivered women’s perceptions of CC’s community groups (CGs) and community support groups (CSGs). We performed multiple logistic regression to determine the association between the functionality of these groups and women’s perception regarding these groups’ activities on maternal health. The integration of community participation involving CCs started to roll out through the operationalisation of the Health and Population Sector Programme 1998–2003. In 2019, 13,907 CCs were operational. However, per our CC assessment, their accessibility and readiness were moderate but there were gaps in the functionality of the CCs. The perception of women regarding these groups’ functionality was significantly better when the group members met regularly. The gaps in CCs are primarily induced by the shortcomings of its community participation model. Proper understanding is needed to address this problem which has many facets and layers, including political priorities, expectations, and provisions at a local level.