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
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Want to learn how to institutionalize iCCM within your national health system? Check out our iCCM Institutionalization Toolkit including key resources, guidance from country experiences, research and tools.

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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.

Icon of spotlights Featured Resource

Advocacy Brief: Achieving Impact at Scale - New Funding Opportunities for Integrated Community Case Management of Childhood Illnesses (iCCM) through the Global Fund

Costing and Financing

This brief, developed by the iCCM Task Team, includes key messages advocating for the inclusion of iCCM, non-malaria commodities, and other systems strengthening for child health in country Global Fund proposals. The resource is available in English, Portuguese, and French.

Computer icon Resources

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

This Save the Children guide is based on findings from a global literature review on iCCM program implementation in emergencies and on case studies from Yemen and Haiti. It provides emergency responders with basic information on iCCM, support for making key decisions to implement iCCM during a spike in humanitarian needs or throughout protracted crisis settings and choices for transition after the acute phase has ended.

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.

Service Delivery and Referral

This paper presents the protocol used in a study to determine and compare treatment failure rates of enhanced iCCM compared with standard iCCM in children aged 2-59 months of age with chest indrawing pneumonia without general danger signs and/or hypoxaemia.

Service Delivery and Referral

This report was commissioned by the Child Health Task Force and developed by Save the Children Kenya in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in 2021. It provides an account of the status of the iCCM strategy in Kenya, the gaps in its delivery system, and the case for investment. The investment case was informed by desk reviews, key informant interviews, and case studies from Busia, Turkana, and Kisumu counties.

Coordination and Policy Setting

Presentation from the webinar hosted by the iCCM subgroup of the Child Health Task Force on June 29, 2021: Governance in Global Health: Achieving impact and sustainability through integrated community case management. The speaker and author of the slides is Dr. Koya Allen (MESA Scientific Officer, Barcelona Institute for Global Health). The session was moderated by subgroup co-chairs Mr. Humphreys Nsona (Malawi MOH) and Anne Linn (PMI/USAID).

Coordination and Policy Setting Human Resources

Presentation slides for the Institutionalizing iCCM subgroup meeting on April 30, 2021, to launch the collaboration with President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) Impact Malaria (IM) on an institutionalizing iCCM toolkit and webpage.

Coordination and Policy Setting

Updated Terms of Reference for the Institutionalizing iCCM subgroup of the Child Health Task Force founded in 2018 and revised in January 2021 following a consultation with subgroup members. 

Costing and Financing Human Resources Service Delivery and Referral

Presentation slides by Tara Bracken and Melody Miles, presented at the iCCM Subgroup webinar hosted on February 11, 2021. The webinar shared highlights from The Global Financing Facility Guide for National Malaria Programs developed by RBM Partnership to End Malaria. The presentation includes background information about the GFF's purpose and function along with opportunities for engagement for malaria & iCCM programs. 

Coordination and Policy Setting Costing and Financing

Presentation slides for the Institutionalizing iCCM Subgroup Meeting hosted November 9, 2020 and facilitated by co-chair Anne Linn (USAID). The presentation discusses the subgroup's goals and objectives, proposed workstreams for 2021, and an update from the iCCM Task Team on work in countries. 

Supply Chain Management

Presentation discussing procurement and supplies in Burkina Faso during Session Seven of the iCCM Technical Consultation, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 22-26, 2019.