Assessment of community participation in safe motherhood health education program in shan state myanmar

Community participation is seen as central to public health arena and closed collaboration with existing community structures was essential for all community level intervention. However, community participation is poorly understood and there have been few published process evaluations of community participation especially in developing countries. This study aimed to assess the level of community participation to safe motherhood health education program in three Pa-Oh villages in Shan State, Myanmar. Observation, individual in-depth interviews and group discussion using qualitative spidergram analytical framework approach were employed. Illustration of the spider-gram framework provided from this study was simple and practical way of visually demonstrating the extent of community participation. This study indicated that the participatory approach used in this program empowered the community development committees and community members in resource mobilization and allocations according to the existing resources, developing action plans to address the priority problems, and having responsibilities in implementation of action plans.