PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Moscibrodzki, Patricia
AU  - Ahumuza, Emmanuel
AU  - Li, Jingjing
AU  - Sun, Xiaoming
AU  - Tao, Yusha
AU  - Van Niekerk, Lindi
AU  - Amazigo, Uche
AU  - Halpaap, Beatrice
AU  - Awor, Phyllis
AU  - Tucker, Joseph D
TI  - Social innovation in health, community engagement, financing and outcomes: qualitative analysis from the social innovation in health initiative
AID  - 10.1136/bmjinnov-2021-000902
DP  - 2022 Jul 01
TA  - BMJ Innovations
PG  - 216--223
VI  - 8
IP  - 3
4099  - http://innovations.bmj.com/content/8/3/216.short
4100  - http://innovations.bmj.com/content/8/3/216.full
SO  - BMJ Innov2022 Jul 01; 8
AB  - Background Social innovation in health is a community-engaged process that links social change and health improvement, drawing on the diverse strengths of local individuals and institutions. However, there are few studies that examine community engagement, financing and outcomes. The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative descriptive analysis to assess 40 social innovations in health identified through a global open call.Methods This qualitative analysis examined social innovation case studies from low- and middle-income countries identified by a global social innovation network. A crowdsourcing open call identified projects and key components of each social innovation were evaluated by an independent panel. We used a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention framework to measure community engagement as shared leadership, collaboration, involvement, consultation or informing. We used descriptive statistics to examine key aspects of community engagement, financing, health outcomes and non-health outcomes.Results Data from 40 social innovations were examined. Social innovations were from Africa (21/40), Asia (11/40), and Latin America and the Caribbean (8/40). Community engagement was diverse and robust across the cases and 60% (24/40) had either shared leadership or collaboration. Financing for social innovation came from research grants (23), national or provincial government support (15), revenues from sales (13), donations (13) and local government support (10). Social innovations reported health and non-health outcomes.Conclusion Our data demonstrate social innovations had robust community engagement. Innovative financing mechanisms provide mechanisms for sustaining social innovations. Further research on health and non-health outcomes of social innovation is needed.Data are available in a public, open access repository. All data are available and listed in the supplementary material.