Annotated bibliography on participatory consultations to help aid the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in setting policy agendas

The purpose of this bibliography is to present studies from peer-reviewed and grey literature that used consultations and other participatory strategies to capture a community’s perspective of their health priorities, and of techniques used to elevate participation from the implementation phase to a more upstream phase of prioritization, policymaking and agenda setting. The focus here is of those studies that worked with marginalized populations or sub-populations. This bibliography contains four areas of research. It begins by first offering some philosophical and conceptual frameworks that link participatory interventions with inclusive policy making or agenda setting, and a rationale for prioritizing marginalized populations in such an undertaking. After situating ourselves in this manner, the second section looks at various participatory instruments for participatory consultations, for reaching out to marginalized populations, and for communicating the results to policymakers. Two sets of distinctions are made here: one between external (non-invitation) and internal (stifling of opinions) exclusion, and between mere participation and from active inclusion within consultations and within the policies. In the third section, examples of consultations that created or changed policy in various jurisdictions are shared, followed by a final section on a reflective and evaluative look at the recruitment, instruments and examples. An earlier iteration of this bibliography was created to assist a multi-country research project by the author to inform the UN Post-2015 development framework of the views of several diverse and highly marginalized populations around the world on their health-related priorities.