Stakeholder analysis can thus be used to identify and map civil society groups, their roles, relations and interests, and to define appropriate forms of participation within health programmes. When such analysis is done in a participatory manner, it strengthens joint planning of proposed work.

For example, participatory mapping of the environmental context and stakeholders has been a primary step in building sustained HIV/AIDS prevention interventions which reach and involve groups such as commercial sex workers that may have otherwise been marginalized.