title: Providing health care to improve community perceptions of protected areas.
abstract: Impoverished communities often turn to illegal extraction of resources from protected areas to alleviate economic pressures or to make monetary gains. Such practices can cause ecological damage and threaten animal populations. These communities also often face a high disease burden and typically do not have access to affordable health care. Here we argue that these two seemingly separate challenges may have a common solution. In particular, providing health care to communities adjacent to protected areas may be an efficient and effective way to reduce the disease burden while also improving local perceptions about protected areas, potentially reducing illegal extraction. We present a case study of a health centre on the edge of Kibale National Park, Uganda. The centre has provided care to c. 7,200 people since 2008 and its outreach programme extends to c. 4,500 schoolchildren each year. Contrasting the provision of health care to other means of improving community perceptions of protected areas suggests that health clinics have potential as a conservation tool in some situations and should be considered in future efforts to manage protected areas.
authors.affiliation: McGill School of Environment and Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7, Canada, and Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Colin A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Chapman
authors.affiliation: Departments of Anthropology and Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Bianca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: van Bavel
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boodman
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Ria R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Ghai
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Jan F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Gogarten
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hartter
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Lauren E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Mechak
authors.affiliation: Makerere University Biological Field Station, Fort Portal, Uganda.
authors.forename: Patrick A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Omeja
authors.affiliation: McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Sofia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poonawala
authors.affiliation: Makerere University Biological Field Station, Fort Portal, Uganda.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tuli
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA.
authors.forename: Tony L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Goldberg
keywords: Ecotourism; Kibale National Park; Uganda; health centre; mobile clinic; non-timber forest products; people–parks interaction