What is the Community-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) Methodology?

The Community-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) methodology is an approach to health care service provision that allows local health care providers to better understand, more effectively treat, and accurately measure outcomes and impacts for the most commonly found causes of unnecessary suffering, sickness and death within their communities.

Advantages of the CBIO Approach

  • Scarce resources are precisely targeted to local causes of illness and death through the assessment of local health needs and the use of census data.

  • Many more people will be reached in a timely manner with appropriate education and treatment because of proactive outreach and communication activities, based upon census data and the use of community maps.

  • CBIO health providers frequently develop closer working relationships with “high risk” families since they see them regularly, resulting in increased trust of the health program, and better acceptance of important health messages.

  • Traditional non-users of health services (who frequently are the sickest within a community) are sought out, making health care access and treatment more equitable and creating a greater impact in the community.

  • Measurable outcomes in areas where the CBIO approach has been used are more precise than many other methods, and usually demonstrate remarkable results that would not have been realized through facility-based primary health care alone.

The CBIO methodology has been repeatedly evaluated and its results reported in peer review journal articles, through professional presentations, and in many of our implementing partners’ project reports. Organizations that have used the CBIO approach praise the method and report that it allows them to measure decreasing childhood mortality, provides pathways to community input and ownership, and ensures equity of health service delivery through pro-active contacts with hard-to-reach, high risk families.

Technical References