Since the mid-1980s, the idea of community mobilization has gained a growing popularity within public health and development discourses. Over the last two decades particularly, it has been increasingly seen as central to health promotion and communication projects and has often formed a key component of programs focused on maternal and newborn health, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, alcohol and substance abuse, youth violence, HIV/AIDS, and polio eradication, and so on.

Most key technical and funding agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and [Page 230]Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have actively used and promoted the concept. Despite its growing ...