Significance of a social mobilization intervention for engaging communities in polio vaccination campaigns: Evidence from CORE Group Polio Project, Uttar Pradesh, India

Manojkumar Choudhary, Roma Solomon, Jitendra Awale, Rina Dey, Jagajeet Prasad Singh, William Weiss

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

health programs and the social mobilization (SM) intervention of India’s polio eradicationprogram is one such example that contributed to eliminating polio from thecountry. CORE Group Polio Project (CGPP), a partner of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) SMNetwork executed its activities through a network of social mobilizers called CommunityMobilization Coordinators (CMCs). These were deployed in polio high riskareas to perform awareness generation and trust-building activities with communitiesand achieved high coverage of polio vaccination during Supplementary ImmunizationActivity campaigns (SIAs). This paper measures the extent and outcomesof CMC community engagement in SM interventions and polio SIAs.Methods This study used secondary, cluster-level data from Management InformationSystem of CGPP India, including 52 SIAs held between January 2008 toSeptember 2017 in 56 blocks/polio planning units, covering 12 districts of U.P. Weused five indicators that reflected community engagement in polio SIAs and constructeda Community Engagement Index (CEI). Further, we estimated the differencein the CEI between CMC and non-CMC areas, using Generalized EstimatingEquations (GEE) and also estimated treatment effects through Difference-in-Differences(DID) method using STATA.Results Overall, 78.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 78.3, 78.8) of families fromthe study area were engaged in the polio SIAs and the extent of community engagementincreased over time. The mean CEI of entire study period in CMC areas(85.8%; 95% CI = 85.6, 86.0) was significantly higher (P < 0.001) than that of non-CMC areas (71.3%; 95% CI = 71.1, 71.5). Over time, the SM intervention led toat least 11 percentage points increase in the CEI of CMC areas with about 17% ofthis achievement attributable to CGPP India’s SM efforts.Conclusions The study findings suggest that intensive social mobilization effortscan significantly increase the extent of community engagement. The communityengagement learnings of polio SM Network may be useful to achieve the desiredoutcomes of public health programs such as the National Health Mission (NHM)of India, that serves communities for multiple health issues.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1-12
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of global health
Volume11
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Health Policy
  • Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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