Since the second half of the last century, community health has remained at the forefront of global health investment, practice, and research as a way to capture foreign interventions in peripheral communities both outside and within the so-called developed world. Apart from a few exceptions, the wealth of literature has had limited engagement with the inherent concept of “community” – a gap explained by the dominant liberal reluctance towards concepts that seem to threaten an imagined individuality and autonomy. This panel seeks to contribute to a critical global history by historicizing "community" within the context of global health since the 1950s. By examining case studies from Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and global disability policies, we aim to uncover how "community" has been variously conceptualized, instrumentalized, and imagined across different socio-political landscapes. Our collective inquiry addresses several themes highlighted in the call for papers, including expanding the global archive, promoting multivocality, and engaging with decolonial perspectives. First Sebastián Fonseca (University of Exeter) explores how Colombian communities actively shaped the Candelaria Community Health Program (1957–1974), challenging narratives of locals as mere aid recipients and asserting their culture and agency amid Cold War developmentalism. Cristian Montenegro (King’s College London) examines the semantic evolution of "community" in Chilean mental health policy from the 1960s to the early 2000s, highlighting its adaptation across socialist, authoritarian, and neoliberal regimes. Felipe Szabzon (University of Copenhagen) discusses the changing landscape of community mental health care in São Paulo, Brazil, noting shifts in psychiatric reform and socio-economic challenges, especially in the post-pandemic context. Finally, Paul van Trigt (Leiden University) analyzes the World Health Organization's Community-Based Rehabilitation approach since the 1970s, showing how responsibility for disabled persons' health has increasingly been assigned to "the community," reflecting neoliberal and social conservative shifts that transfer state responsibilities to families and local networks.