Social accountability as linked to community participation can be initiated and controlled by beneficiaries. However, the questions of which combinations of social accountability mechanisms may work best in a specific context and how to involve beneficiaries in the shaping of those mechanisms have not yet been answered. This movie shows the involvement of beneficiaries besides representatives of health sector and local authorities in the advisory process of developing social accountability interventions aiming to improve maternal health services in two health zones in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Methods Beneficiaries including men, women, community health workers, representatives of health sector and local authorities were purposively selected and involved in an advisory process using the Dialogue Model in the two health zones: (1) Eight focus group discussion were organized separately during consultation aimed to share and discuss results from the situation analysis, and collect propositions for improvement, (2) Representatives of participants in previous focus groups were involved in dialogue meetings for prioritizing and integrating propositions from focus group discussions, and (3) the integrated propositions were discussed by research partners and set as intervention components in programming. All the process was audio-taped, transcribed and analysed using inductive content analysis. Results. Overall 121 participants of whom 51 females were involved in the process. They provided 49 suggestions during the consultation, summarized in eleven propositions. The propositions were integrated into six intervention components during dialogue meetings: (1) use community health workers and a health committee for collecting and transmitting community concerns about health services (voice), (2) build the capacity of the community in terms of knowledge and information, (3) involve community leaders through dialogue meetings, (4) improve the attitude of health providers towards voice and the management of voice at health facility level, (5) involve the health service supervisors (Health Zone management team officers) in community participation and (6) use other existing interventions. These components were then articulated into three intervention components during programming: create a formal reporting system (voice), introduce dialogue meetings (improving enforceability and answerability) and enhance the health providers’ responsiveness (responsiveness and answerability). Conclusions. The use of the Dialogue Model allowed to involve community beneficiaries with other community stakeholders having different perspectives and types of knowledge in an advisory process and to articulate their suggestions on a combination of social accountability intervention components, specific for the two health zones context.

• published: 28 Apr 2016
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