From engagement to action: Co-designing health interventions with communities and across sectors

This course explores community engagement and co-design for health interventions, taking a multisectoral perspective grounded in evidence on the social determinants of health. It focuses on strategic and practical considerations for engaging communities in meaningful and sustainable ways across the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of health interventions. The course examines how community engagement and co-design can be strategically designed and implemented in contexts where health objectives depend on collaboration among actors from health, social, economic, and other sectors. Through interactive discussions and applied case work, participants analyze how engagement processes can be aligned with institutional mandates, decision-making processes, and implementation realities, with an emphasis on clarifying whom to engage, how and when engagement should take place, and how community input can inform decisions and support effective multisector action.

By the end of the course participants will be able to:

• Explain the value of community engagement for health-related interventions, drawing on evidence on the social determinants of health.
• Analyse health-related interventions to identify key community and sectoral stakeholders, their roles, interests, and influence.
• Design context-appropriate community engagement and co-design processes for multisector health-related interventions.
• Assess how power, incentives, and accountability shape community engagement and multisector collaboration in specific contexts.
• Select and apply practical tools to plan and facilitate community engagement across the intervention cycle (diagnosis, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation).
• Develop a draft community engagement and co-design plan adaptable to your professional or organizational contexts.

None.

• Input lectures
• Case studies
• Group work

To get the Certificate of completion and the 1 ECTS, participants must:‍

• Attend at least 80% of the course.
• Attend the plenary offered on the first day of the course.
• Present completed practical work.

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At least one facilitator will be on-site in Lugano, and some may join online. Participants are welcomed to join either on-site in Lugano, or online. If face-to-face meeting was problematic for unforeseen reasons, the course could be held online. For those on-site, the course will take place at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).

For course pricing information, see here. Discounts are available for participants from UMICs, LMICs, PhD and Master Students, and Students and Employees from the LSS Partner Universities (SSPH+, USI, SUPSI, and SWISS TPH).