Background Participatory approaches are considered essential to ensure community health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous reviews on community participation have explored different aspects of participation in specific contexts, such as public health emergencies, but none has examined participatory approaches both in depth and in breadth across diverse activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and considering diverse communities in all country contexts. This scoping review seeks to: (a) provide an overview of participatory approaches in terms of the features and depth of participation, the breadth of the communities and stakeholders involved, and for what types of activities and interventions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic across all country contexts; (b) explore the challenges and facilitators of participation processes; and (c) analyse to what extent participation impacts community health, including health equity, in the context of a public health emergency. Methods We developed this protocol following the latest JBI guidance on scoping reviews. A comprehensive search strategy combining the concepts of participation, community health, and COVID-19 was used to search the databases of Medline/Ovid, Embase.com, Cochrane CENTRAL, Web of Science, APA PsycInfo/Ovid, Global Health/Ovid, ERIC/OvidSP, CINAHL/EBSCOhost, ClinTrials.gov, and the grey literature through Google Scholar. At least two reviewers will perform screening of titles/abstracts and full text using the inclusion and exclusion criteria defined in this protocol. Article characteristics and data on participatory approaches and community health will be charted to provide an overview of the literature, map the variations in participatory approaches and community health, and explore patterns in the links between participation, community health, and the type of activities to address the challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion We anticipate that review findings will contribute to advance innovative thinking about community participation and facilitating better application and integration of participatory approaches to ensure community health in a future public health emergency or in building back better fairer in the new normal.
