It offers a practical way to involve the public in making healthcare decisions. CHAT is a simulation exercise, something like a board game. To engage communities, we modified an exercise called CHAT (Choosing All Together).
We suggest policy makers, researchers and funders consider programmes that communities view as essential for improving mother-and-child nutrition. This article presents one approach for public engagement. To help mothers and children be well nourished they proposed: providing school breakfast paid maternity leave improved food safety and establishing community gardens and clubs. They put more emphasis on the underlying causes of malnutrition. The respondents in Soweto, an urban township in South Africa with constrained resources, didn’t focus much on health system programmes. We asked community members which programmes they would prioritise if they were given a limited health budget. We designed a study that puts communities into the shoes of policy makers.
We are a group of social scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand who have been exploring approaches for public engagement. Only by understanding what communities consider important can policies respond to the actual needs of individuals.
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