Integrated Community Case Management: Next Steps in Addressing the Implementation Research Agenda

Integrated community case management (iCCM) of malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea has been increasingly adopted as a strategy to improve the access of children to treatment of these diseases in underserved areas. iCCM offers a way for-ward both from the perspective of the sick child and from the perspective of rational drug use, by providing diagnostics-guided, evidence-based treatment of the sick child. Attesting to the importance of this approach, a United Nations Chil-dren’s Fund/World Health Organization (UNICEF/WHO) joint statement justifying the need for iCCM and making rec-ommendations on its implementation was released this year and republished in this special supplement.1 However, there are many facets to this approach that need to be optimized for iCCM to have the greatest impact on morbidity and mortality of children less than five years of age. Well-designed imple-