Study area
The study conducted at Njombe District Council (NDC); which is one of the six councils constituting Njombe region. The council has 3134 square kilometers that is equivalent to 3,133,400 hectares. The council has 2 divisions which are Lupembe division and Makambako division. The NDC has 11 wards, 44 villages, 219 sub-villages with 20,526 households.
Study design,population and sampling
The study employed a cross sectional study design whereby both primary and secondary)were collected so as to document ideas, opinions, and information. Probability and non probability sampling procedure was used. In probability sampling, simple random sampling was used to interview health staff and in non-probability sampling, purposive sampling were used for health facilities committee’s members and CHMT. Sample size was 98 which obtained at the level of precision of 7% to repesent the entire study population which was 190; comprising 8 CHMT members, 64 HFGCs members of 8 dispensaries, 18 HFGCs members of 2 health centers, and 100 health staff. The study subjects who were eligible to participate in this study were members of HFGC, CHMT members and health staff from ten health facilities from Njombe District council who agreed to participate in this study. The study excluded those who did not agree to participate.
Data Collection and Measurements
The study drew its data from two main sources: primary sources and secondary sources. The study was based on both qualitative and quantitative approach. The primary sources were original sources of information that used interviews, focus group discussion. Questionnaire and focus group discussion were used to collect data from HFGCs while interview was used to collect data from both HFGCs and health staff. Secondary sources included published and unpublished reports and records such as; files of HFGC members, reports, guidelines, directives, policies, regulations, books, journals and minutes of HFGC meetings. Questions were prepared in English language and in Kiswahili language.The study used both structured and unstructured interview schedules for data collection. In order to make study results consistent and reliable, the same and uniform research instruments (questionnaire, interview guides and focus group discussion) were administered to all respondents. Also, reliability was attained through pilot testing of the two instruments (questionnaire, interview) in Morogoro region specifically at St. Thomas Health Centre at Kilakala and Mlali Dispensary in order to find out if they were well understood.
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The collected data were sorted and cleaned manually to detect errors before making any computations. Data entry was done by using Microsoft Office Excel 2016 before importing them to the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS V.20). Thus, already summarized data which were quantitatively oriented were imported into SPSS V.20 for further analysis. For qualitative data which was collected by an interview and FGD was analyzed by content analysis.
The findings from the data analysis were presented by using tables and figure.
Ethics Consideration
Letter of introduction was obtained from Mzumbe University from Regional Administrative Secretary (RAS) of Njombe, permission letter was also obtained from the District Executive Director to collect data from all ten health facilities in Njombe District Council. Furthermore, permission was granted to researcher by Health Secretary of Njombe Diocese so as to collect data from faith based health organizations.