Community Health Workers
Home- or Community-Based Programmes for Treating Malaria: Review
This review evaluated the effects of a home- or community-based program for treating malaria in a malaria endemic setting through interventions involving training community health workers or mothers. [adapted from author]
- 644 reads
Learning from the Brazilian Community Health Worker Model in North Wales
This article describes the rationale for the UK to learn from Brazil’s scaled-up Community Health Worker primary care strategy, starting with a pilot project in North Wales. [from abstract]
- 662 reads
Gender and Social Geography: Impact on Lady Health Workers Mobility in Pakistan
In Pakistan, where gendered norms restrict women’s mobility, female community health workers (CHWs) provide doorstep primary health services to home-bound women. This study aims to understand how these cultural norms affect CHWs’ home-visit rates and the quality of services delivered. [from abstract]
- 885 reads
Community-Based Family Planning Toolkit
This toolkit contains resources to help policy makers, program managers, service providers, and other audiences improve access to and quality of community-based family planning services. [from publisher]
- 662 reads
Community Health Workers Lead the Way in Niger
In this 7 minute video, UNICEF reports on a programme to train community health workers to provide life-saving services in the hardest-to-reach places in Niger. [adapted from publisher]
- 732 reads
Community Health Workers Save Children in Mali
This 7 minute video presents the issues of HRH in Mali and a program to train community health workers to provide life-saving services in the hardest-to-reach places in Mali. [adapted from publisher]
- 629 reads
Excellent Clinical Outcomes and High Retention in Care Among Adults in a Community-Based HIV Treatment Program in Rural Rwanda
This artical reports the clinical and programatic outcomes at 24 months for a cohort of patients enrolled in a community-based anti-retroviral treatment (ART) program in southeastern Rwanda which provided additional measures of support at the community level, including community-based psychosocial support and directly observed ART delivered by community health workers. [adapted from author]
- 968 reads
CHW Principles of Practice: Guiding Principles for Non-Governmental Organizations and Their Partners for Coordinated National Scale-Up of Community Health Worker Programs
The principles outlined in this document are intended as a framework for advocacy, programming and partnership between implementing NGOs, government and donor agencies working with key community health worker (CHW) cadres in countries for which rapid and urgent scale-up of CHW programs is a priority.
- 779 reads
Deployment of Community Health Workers across Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: Financial Considerations and Operational Assumptions
This paper provides cost guidance for one adaptable configuration of a community health worker subsystem: a provider system housed within a larger primary-health-care system that includes clinics and referral hospitals. Costing is done by function and by local epidemiologic characteristics so that components and assumptions can be easily modified. [adapted from introduction]
- 946 reads
Effects of Selected Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Community Health Workers on Performance of Home Visits during Pregnancy: A Cross-Sectional Study in Busia District, Kenya
This study sought to further the evidence on how socio-demographic factors influence community health worker effectiveness in conducting home visits in order to ensure the adoption of evidence based maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition best practices and to increase demand for facility based services, including skilled birth attendance. [adapted from author]
- 714 reads
Burden Experienced by Community Health Volunteers in Taiwan: A Survey
Volunteers in Taiwan complement the delivery of health services by paid health professionals. This paper explores the burdens associated with their activities and the degree to which they are experienced. [adapted from abstract]
- 502 reads
Outreach Services to Improve Access to Health Care in South Africa: Lessons from Three Community Health Worker Programmes
This article examines three South African community health worker programs, a small local non-governmental organisation, a local satellite of a national NGO, and a government-initiated service, that provide a range of services from home-based care, childcare, and health promotion to assist clients in overcoming poverty-related barriers to health care to identify factors that constrain and enable outreach services to improve access to care. [from abstract]
- 696 reads
Rapid Assessment of a Community Health Worker Pilot Programme to Improve the Mangement of Hypertension and Diabetes in Emfuleni Sub-Distric of Gauteng Province, South Africa
Using a rapid assessment, this study examines the outcomes of a pilot community health worker program to improve the management of hypertension and diabetes in Gauteng province, South Africa. [from abstract]
- 620 reads
Improving Outcomes with Community Health Workers
This program management unit explores some of the key components and lessons learned from designing and implementing community health worker programs within national primary healthcare
systems. [adapted from author]
- 549 reads
Applying a Framework for Assessing the Health System Challenges to Scaling up mHealth in South Africa
This paper applies a health systems perspective to guide analysis of potential challenges of scaling up mHealth for the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of community-based health services (CBS) in South Africa. This formalisation of CBS is expected to bring greater standardisation of M&E and supervision systems for community health workers. [adapted from author]
- 824 reads
Decision Making among Community-Based Volunteers Working in Vulnerable Children Programs
This study was collected data from caregivers who work directly with vulnerable children to explore how care decisions are made by community-based volunteers, and the utility of the Child Status Index at the community level as a job aid. [adapted from summary]
- 770 reads
Lessons Learned from Scaling up a Community-Based Health Program in the Upper East Region of Northern Ghana
This paper describes the history of how an experimental study set the stage for a national program for promoting community-based primary health care—the Community-Based Health Planning and Services initiative, which deployed nurses to the community and engaged local leaders, reducing child mortality and fertility substantially. [adapted from author]
- 745 reads
Effectiveness of a Community-Based Positive Prevention Intervention for People Living with HIV Who Are Not Receiving Antiretroviral Treatment: A Prospective Cohort Study
This controlled study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a personalized HIV risk-reduction intervention delivered by community health workers to people who know they have HIV and who are not on treatment. [from author]
- 615 reads
Assessment of the Uptake of Neonatal and Young Infant Referrals by Community Health Workers to Public Health Facilities in an Urban Informal Settlement, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a referral system - where community health workers (CHW) were trained to refer babies with illnesses or identified danger signs - by describing CHW referral completion rates as well as mothers’ health-care seeking practices. [adapted from author]
- 664 reads
Health Systems Supports for Community Case Management of Childhood Illness: Lessons from an Assessment of Early Implementation in Malawi
This paper presents the results of a mixed-methods assessment of selected health systems supports for community-based health workers in a national community case management program for childhood illness in Malawi during the first year of implementation. [adapted from abstract]
- 681 reads
How Effective Are Community Health Workers? An Overview of Current Evidence with Recommendations for Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Accelerate Progress in Achieving the Health-Related Millennium Development Goals
The purpose of this review is to assess the effectiveness of community health worker programs, with particular emphasis on how they have or how they might assist countries in achieving the health-related MDGs.[from author]
- 1784 reads
Mobile Health (mHealth) Approaches and Lessons for Increased Performance and Retention of Community Health Workers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Review
The aim of this article was to conduct a thematic review of how mHealth projects have approached the intersection of mobile technology and public health in low- and middle-income countries and identify the promising practices and experiences learned, as well as novel and innovative approaches of how mHealth can support community health workers. [adapted from abstract]
- 1186 reads
Provision of Injectable Contraceptives in Ethiopia through Community-Based Reproductive Health Agents
The objective of this study was to determine if, with appropriate training, volunteers known as community-based reproductive health agents can administer injectable contraceptives to women in a rural region of Ethiopia with the same effectiveness, safety and acceptability as health extension workers. [from author]
- 685 reads
Community Discussion Guide for Maternal and Newborn Health Care: A Training Manual for Safe Motherhood Action Groups
This guide contains detailed guidance on how to train safe motherhood action group volunteers in two key areas of their portfolio – maternal and newborn health care.
- 1887 reads
Knowledge and Performance of the Ethiopian Health Extension Workers on Antenatal and Delivery Care: A Cross-Sectional Study
This study investigated the knowledge and performance of health extension workers (HEWs) on antenatal and delivery care. The study also explored the barriers and facilitators for HEWs in the provision of maternal health care. [from abstract]
- 847 reads
Role of Health Extension Workers in Improving Utilization of Maternal Health Services in Rural Areas in Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study
Ethiopia has been deploying specially trained cadres of community based health workers named health extension workers. This study investigates the role of these these community health workers in improving utilization of maternal health services. [adapted from abstract]
- 4243 reads
Assessing Community Health Workers' Performance Motivation: A Mixed-Methods Approach on India's Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) Programme
This study examined the performance motivation of community health workers and its determinants on India’s Accredited Social Health Activist program. [from abstract]
- 1351 reads
Scale-Up of Home-Based Management of Malaria Based on Rapid Diagnostic Tests and Artemisinin-Based Combination Therapy in a Resource-Poor Country: Results in Senegal
In Senegal, an pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of a malaria treatment program in remote villages by volunteer home care providers. This paper reports the results of the scale-up in the targeted communities and the impact of the strategy on malaria in the formal health sector. [adapted from abstract]
- 832 reads
Increasing Community Health Worker Productivity and Effectiveness: A Review of the Influence of the Work Environment
This article presents policy-makers and programme managers with key considerations for a model to improve the work environment as an important approach to increase community health worker productivity and, ultimately, the effectiveness of community-based strategies. [from abstract]
- 846 reads
Are Community Midwives Addressing the Inequities in Access to Skilled Birth Attendance in Punjab, Pakistan? Gender, Class and Social Exclusion
To address its high maternal mortality rate, in particular the inequities in access to maternal health care services, the government of Pakistan created a new cadre of community-based midwives. This study is designed to address a critical gap in our knowledge about whether this cadre of workers, operating in the private health care context, will meet the expectation to provide care to the poorest and most marginalized women. [adapted from author]
- 981 reads