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written by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr.
1.0 CHARACTERISTICS OF A COMMUNITY TRIAL
·
A community intervention study targets the whole
community and not individuals.
·
For some conditions intervention at the level of
the community is more effective in disease prevention that targeting high risk
individuals.
·
Intervention at the level of the community may
involve environmental changes that are easier to undertake than attempting to
produce large scale voluntary behavioral change with regard to disease risk
factors.
·
Another advantage of intervention at the
community level is that high risk lifestyles and behaviors are influenced more
by community norms than by individual preferences.
·
A community intervention has an advantage over
other study designs in that it tests the effect of intervention in the actual
natural conditions of the community and not in an artificial study situation.
·
It is cheaper and more practical to test
interventions at the community level than at the individual level.
2.0 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
·
The strength of the he community intervention
study can evaluate a public health intervention is natural field circumstances.
·
Selection bias is likely to occur when
allocation is by community.
·
People in the control community may receive the
intervention under study on their own because tight control as occurs in
laboratory experimental or animal studies is not possible with humans.
3.0 INFORMED CONSENT
·
The experimental community does not have a chance
for individualized informed consent
·
Obtaining individual consent is logistically
impossible