Importance of a Community Map

• To identify the various households including marginalized and vulnerable households and their location in the community for purpose of household registration and service provision during outreach and emergencies.
• To identify social amenities and resources like schools, hospitals, community centers, water access points, banks, social groups, hotels, NGO’s etc. in the community that are regularly accessed for services by the community members.
• Essential to identify individuals whom people usually seek advice or go to for treatment, care and support besides the health worker.
• To document boundaries for a PHC facility catchment area which will facilitate planning community actions.
• To identify features that can pose risk of disease to the community e.g. stagnant water ponds, dams, waste fields.
• To identifying populations at high risk of not accessing or using PHC services, including persons with disabilities, elderly as well as defaulter of non-communicable disease (NCDs) and hard to reach populations.

Maps will be used to document community health and nutrition needs, assist with consensus-building and decision-making, planning for health services and to ensure everyone, especially the most vulnerable get access to health and other services.