. Mohammad Hosein Mehrolhasani; . ahid Yazdi‑Feyzabadi; . Sara Ghasemi
Volume 11, Issue 6 , July 2021, , Pages 1-12
Abstract
Community empowerment has been proposed since the 1980s as a way to increase people’s powerto influence social determinants of health. However, community empowerment for health ...
Read More
Community empowerment has been proposed since the 1980s as a way to increase people’s powerto influence social determinants of health. However, community empowerment for health promotionin urban slums still faces challenges. The present study examined interventions, challenges, actors,scopes, and the consequences mentioned in various studies and with emphasizing interventionsand executive challenges tried to create a clear understanding of empowerment programs in slumsand improving their health. Narrative review method was used to conduct the study. Databasesincluding PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane were searched. The selectionof studies was done according to the “community empowerment” defined by the World HealthOrganization, the concept of bottom–up approach for health promotion of Laverack and Labonte’sstudy and definition of slums by UN-HABITAT. Finally, Hare and Noblit’s meta-synthesis was usedto analyze the studies. From 15 selected studies, the most intervention proposed for empowermentwas identified to be “residents’ participation in expressing problems and solutions.” The challenge of“creating a sense of trust and changing some attitudes among residents” was the greatest challengein the studies. Moreover, “improving living conditions and health services” were the most importantoutcomes, “slum residents” and “governments” were the most important actors, and “sanitation”was the most important scope among the studies. Having a comprehensive view to the health andits determinants and attention to the factors beyond neighborhood and health sector would lead tofewer implementation challenges and better intervention choices to health promotion of slum dwellers.
