Enhancing Community Participation in Research for Under-five Children Living in an Urban Slum in Mumbai

Abstract

Engaging community in paediatric research is quite challenging, as it also involves
parents and families. This paper is based on the experiences of researchers conducting
a community-based study for assessing the vitamin D status of children between 1–5
years. While multiple reasons emerged for non-participation during the first phase,
strategic community friendly approaches to engage parents and community improved
the participation rate to 62.7 percent in the second phase. There is a critical need to
enhance efforts for community engagement in paediatric research.