In March 2017, nearly 400 community health champions from 44 countries, representing multiple sectors, gathered in Johannesburg to share global and country specific evidence and lessons and identify opportunities and challenges – financial and human resources, programmatic, and socio-political – for institutionalizing community health as an integral component of primary health care in order to transform the future and ensure that every mother, newborn, and child not only survives but thrives in the Sustainable Development Goals era.
Champions of community health – including government officials, civil society and private sector leaders, policymakers, sub-national managers and practitioners, researchers, representatives of bilateral and multilateral organization and donors -- outlined 10 critical principles that they recommend countries focus on to accelerate progress in health. To ensure that progress is made towards strengthening community health systems, all community level actors/groups and social networks, formal and traditional systems as well as all sectors with effects on health, will need to join forces to achieve the promise of health for all.