Community champion approaches: rapid scoping review of evidence
Summary of existing evidence on community champion approaches and discussion of implications, including for pandemic response and recovery.
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Community champions or health champions are active community members who draw on their local knowledge, skills and life experience to promote health and wellbeing or improve conditions in their local community. They address barriers to engagement and improve connections between services and disadvantaged communities. Many local areas have developed community champion programmes to help support their local coronavirus (COVID-19) response.
This rapid scoping review pulls together and considers existing research evidence on community champions approaches, both from the UK and internationally. This includes research on previous UK champion programmes focused on health improvement and international studies of champion type roles in HIV prevention and outbreak control.
Overall, findings show that:
- champion approaches are highly relevant to reducing health inequalities in a range of contexts
- there a range of different models and ways of building community champion programmes
- these approaches can be applied flexibly to meet local needs and assets
- champions can be key connectors in communities but these roles do not operate in isolation and need to be embedded in effective community engagement strategies
Examples from practice are used to illustrate and strengthen these findings wherever possible. Implications, including for pandemic response and recovery are discussed.
The review aims to give those responsible for commissioning and delivering community champions programmes a better understanding of the evidence base for these kinds of approaches, including different ways of building local programmes and key factors to consider for successful implementation.