“The Maasai Need Cows and the Cows Need Maasai,” the Use of a Photovoice Approach to Assess Animal Health Needs

Photovoice is a participatory action research strategy that may offer unique contributions to women's health. It is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. Photovoice has three main goals: to enable people (1) to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through large and small group discussion of their photographs, and (3) to reach policymakers. This report gives an overview of the origins, key concepts, methods, and uses of photovoice as a strategy to enhance women's health.

Although a growing number of projects have been implemented using the community-based participatory research method known as photovoice, no known systematic review of the literature on this approach has been conducted to date. This review draws on the peer-reviewed literature on photovoice in public health and related disciplines conducted before January 2008 to determine (a) what defines the photovoice process, (b) the outcomes associated with photovoice, and (c) how the level of community participation is related to photovoice processes and outcomes. In all, 37 unduplicated articles were identified and reviewed using a descriptive coding scheme and Viswanathan et al.'s quality of participation tool. Findings reveal no relationship between group size and quality of participation but a direct relationship between the latter and project duration as well as with getting to action. More participatory projects also were associated with long-standing relationships between the community and outside researcher partners and an intensive training component. Although vague descriptions of project evaluation practices and a lack of consistent reporting precluded hard conclusions, 60% of projects reported an action component. Particularly among highly participatory projects, photovoice appears to contribute to an enhanced understanding of community assets and needs and to empowerment.

Photovoice is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. As a practice based in the production of knowledge, photovoice has three main goals: (1) to enable people to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important issues through large and small group discussion of photographs, and (3) to reach policymakers. Applying photovoice to public health promotion, the authors describe the methodology and analyze its value for participatory needs assessment. They discuss the development of the photovoice concept, advantages and disadvantages, key elements, participatory analysis, materials and resources, and implications for practice.