Considerations at the community level

Within this Toolkit, “community” is defined as “a specific group of people who share a common culture, values and norms, identity, interest, action, place, practice, or circumstance, and are arranged in social connection according to relationships which have developed over a period of time and may be modified in the future”. As a consequence of COVID-19 restrictions more and more communities are now being formed and developed through social media and virtual platforms. Communities can be:

• communities of interest: people who share the same interest or experiences;
• communities of action: people trying to collaborate and bring about change;
• communities of place: people brought together by geographic boundaries;
• communities of practice: people in the same profession or learning together;
• communities of circumstance: people brought together by external events/situations.
  

In reality, communities are usually a combination of the above and it is important to recognize who initiates community-building and why, and what the shared purpose or goal is. Please refer to the Community engagement framework for quality, people-centred and resilient health services for further information on community engagement.

This section of the Toolkit contains further information and links to tools that support the following functions at the community level: