Assessment is done at the beginning of a trial and that is looking at the agenda of a trial. The agenda of a trial will help you on how to select and appropriate stakeholder at each stage or phase of a trial. The assessment is done through various ways, such as mapping, focus groups, interviews and conversations with key informants and of course, consultations with the CAB. At each phase of a study there are always stakeholder who will be more important than others depending on the agenda of a trial, objectives and goals.
After stakeholder selection is done, in my case we usually have meetings separately to avoid confusion or misunderstanding among different classes of categories of stakeholders. The groups may be categorized as follows for example, health centre staff for the trial site, Community Advisory Bord (CAB), Traditional healers and other categories.
The aim of the meeting is to introduce the study to all the identified stakeholders first and then then come down to who will be directly involved through out the implementation of the study.
It is obvious that depending on a phase and agenda of the study, other stakeholders may be more relevant than the other. This also means that their involvement may differ from one stakeholder to another depending on their knowledge, influence, and regard in the Community and also their willingness to take part in the trial.
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