Integrated Community Case Management (iCCM)

Programmatic experience shows that an integrated strategy can be effective in achieving high treatment coverage and delivering high-quality care to sick children in the community.1

Photo of a man administering healthcare to a child on a woman's lap.
Photo credit: Fernando Fidelis/MCSP, Muecate District, Nampula Province, Mozambique

What is iCCM?

Integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) is a strategy to train, support, and supply community health workers (CHW) to provide diagnostic, treatment, and referral services for three common, treatable, and curable childhood illnesses: malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea. Young children are especially vulnerable to these illnesses, and iCCM offers caregivers in these hard-to-reach communities a way to help children under five get the treatment they need before it is too late.2 iCCM has become one of the key global health strategies recognized by stakeholders across the health system. When well-designed and implemented, an iCCM program expands access to life saving interventions for vulnerable populations living in settings with poor access to health care.


Why iCCM?

Over the last decade or so, key global stakeholders working with country level partners and Ministries of Health in high burden countries have been successful in bringing in policy change, with the majority of the countries approving iCCM as a key strategy to deliver life-saving interventions to remote and inaccessible communities. However, implementation at scale shows mixed results, with very few countries able to cover a significant proportion of the iCCM target areas. Also, most countries still rely on donor support to fund their iCCM programs, which has resulted in limited implementation coverage. Many countries that have scaled up iCCM also struggle to maintain an acceptable level of service integration and quality. There is a huge unfinished agenda that includes, most importantly, weak global guidance and national governance, and weak integration and implementation quality. Addressing these issues will require continued global level coordination and support to help countries achieve their goal of quality implementation of iCCM at scale. To be effective, iCCM must be ministry-led, adequately resourced and managed, with long-term commitments of support from partners. National ownership of the iCCM strategy requires that countries plan and adequately budget for iCCM implementation, including domestic funding sources for health.

The set of resources presented below was collated by the Child Health Task Force subgroup for Institutionalizing iCCM and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Impact Malaria. They are meant to guide national and subnational policymakers in their journey towards institutionalization as well as provide information for implementers engaged in iCCM programs at the country and community levels.

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Policy, Program, and Operational Learnings Report of iCCM/CMAM Integration

Service Delivery and Referral Communication and Social Mobilization M&E and Health Information Systems

USAID-funded MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership developed this report in September 2021 to share learnings and programmatic experiences of integrating community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) and integrated community case management (iCCM). The report presents key findings from a literature review of peer-reviewed articles, technical documents, program reports, consultative meeting proceedings, and global and national guidelines that focus on integrating these strategies.

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These resources are grouped using the components in the iCCM benchmark framework developed by USAID.³ For more iCCM resources, see this list in the Child Health Task Force Resource Library.

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Human Resources Service Delivery and Referral Supervision and Performance Quality Assurance

Presentation by Catherine Kane introducing the WHO Guideline on Health Policy and Support System to Optimize Community Health Worker Programs, from the iCCM Technical Consultation held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Service Delivery and Referral

Presentation by Asiya Odugleh-Kolev on the WHO Community Engagement Framework and experiences from Rwanda, during Session Four of the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Service Delivery and Referral

Presentation on lessons learned from the Rapid Access Expansion Programe, a scaled, multi-context iCCM implementation program, by Salim Sadruddin during Session Two of the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Service Delivery and Referral

Presentation on Primary Health Care at the Community Level by Maureen Adudans and Rory Nefdt during Session One of the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Service Delivery and Referral

Presentation on Child Health and Survival in the SDG Era by Wilson Were during Session One of the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Costing and Financing

Presentation by Valentina Buj on HBHI Financing from the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Communication and Social Mobilization

Presentation by Abdisalan Noor introducing the HBHI Response Element, Use of Strategic Information to Drive Impact, from the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.

Service Delivery and Referral

This resource is a joint statement from the World Health Organization and UNICEF on integrated community case management (iCCM).

Coordination and Policy Setting Supply Chain Management Service Delivery and Referral Supervision and Performance Quality Assurance M&E and Health Information Systems

This inter-agency resource examines the guidelines for implementing integrated community case management (iCCM) in Uganda. 

 

Human Resources

This action plan lays out the Ugandan Ministry of Health's strategy to implement integrated community case management (iCCM).