The World Health Organization Engaging with Civil Society Networks to Promote Primary Health Care: A Case Study

Claire Dickerson, Nathan Grills, Nick Henwood, Susannah Jeffreys, and Ted Lankester

Engagement between the World Health Organization (WHO) and civil society organizations (CSOs), gains importance as CSOs increase their contribution to public health; particularly to primary health care. To better engage civil society in revitalizing primary health care the WHO collaborated with the Community Health Global Network (CHGN), a civil society network. This article uses the WHO-CHGN relationship to demonstrate how this collaboration enabled the WHO to inform and to learn from those with current primary health care experience. Learning from a systematic documentation of the collaboration provides insight into the WHO and CHGN perspectives concerning the relationship; informs future WHO-CSO collaborations and contributes to the understanding of the ways in which the WHO accesses and hears those actively engaged in health care programs.