The paper reviews 45 published andunpublished reports on community financing completed between1990 and 2001. The main objective of the study was toexplore performance measures reported in the literatureregarding community financing. The study concluded that thereviewed literature is rich in describing scheme design andimplementation. At the same time, evidence on theperformance of community financing schemes is limited. Thestudy focused on reporting measures on three indicators inparticular:Resource mobilization capacity. Communityfinancing mechanisms mobilize significant resources forhealth care. However, there is a large variation in theresource mobilization capacity of various schemes. Thisreview did not find systematic estimates about how muchcommunity financing contributes to health revenues at thelocal and/or national level. Social inclusion. Communityfinancing is effective in reaching a large number oflow-income populations who would otherwise have no financialprotection against the cost of illness. There is largevariation in the size of various schemes. At the same time,there are no estimates about the total population coveredthrough community financing. There are indications that thepoorest and socially excluded groups are not automaticallyreached by community financing initiatives. Financialprotection. Community-based health financing schemes aresystematically reported to reduce the out-of-pocket spendingof their members while increasing their utilization ofhealth care services.
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