Resource Spotlight: Developing Lay Health Worker Policy in South Africa: A Qualitative Study
Over the past half decade South Africa has been developing, implementing and redeveloping its lay health worker (LHW) policies. Research during this period has highlighted challenges with LHW program implementation. These challenges have included an increased burden of care for female LHWs. The aim of this study was to explore contemporary LHW policy development processes and the extent to which issues of gender are taken up within this process.
From the interviews it seems that gender as an issue never reached the policy making agenda. Although there was strong recognition that the working conditions of LHWs needed to be improved, poor working conditions were not necessarily seen as a gender concern. There was no group or body who brought the issue of gender to the attention of policy developers. As such the issue of gender never entered the policy debates on LHW programs. [from abstract]
View this resource.
The HRH Global Resource Center has other resources on this topic including:
- Gender Equality in Human Resources for Health: What Does This Mean and What Can We Do
- Nurses, Community Health Workers, and Home Carers: Gendered Human Resources Compensating for Skewed Health Systems
- Lay Health Workers in Primary and Community Health Care: a Systematic Review of Trials
For additional resources on this topic, visit the Gender Issues or Substitute Health Workers subject categories.
Past Resource Spotlights
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