Table 1

Enablers and barriers

Thematic categoryEnablersBarriers
Contextual factors
  • Presence of existing SHGs

  • Migration (rural and urban)

  • Community willingness to develop groups

  • Poor supply of health services

  • Partnerships with municipalities in urban areas

Intervention design and implementation
  • Problem solving to identify feasible solutions that engage women

  • Giving health messages without women’s active participation

  • Trusted, local female facilitator who leverages local practices and beliefs

  • Poor outreach to target women and influencers

  • Inclusion of most vulnerable through active engagement

  • Group dissolution

  • Sufficient coverage to improve population health

  • Irregular attendance

  • Intergenerational participation, such as mothers-in-law and adolescents

  • Insufficient time spent on health, including duration and frequency

Outcome characteristics
  • Relevant to majority of group members and local community

  • Driven by intrahousehold dynamics and social norms

  • Supply-independent mechanisms to achieve effects possible or intervention addresses supply

  • Dependent on diffusion

  • Limited, focused outcomes

  • SHGs, self-help groups.