Methods

To reiterate, this document is intended to serve as a guide for the health catchment area working group, rather than an authoritative or comprehensive overview of methodologies for creating health catchment areas in general. The content of this guide was informed by published and unpublished meeting reports shared by partner agencies and guidelines established by organizations supporting this initiative. A scoping of literature was done to find relevant studies to support the methods and findings of this review. Interviews were conducted with pre-selected resource persons from MSF, WHO, CHAI and the OSM community to provide more clarity and context to the methods documented. The discussion of components of health catchment area databases and policies was informed by existing guidelines that were found relevant to the goals of this working group. The proposed algorithm for creating health catchment areas is a compendium of already existing strategies used by various stakeholders in the health and humanitarian sector, providing evidence that although methodologies differ, it is possible to find and work towards a consensus. Links to relevant resources (See Appendix 1) used and discussed in this document are included in the references and appendices for further reading.