Community Health Workers

As part of an assessment of quality of community case management services in Malawi, this report examines the bias associated with measuring community health worker performance by using register review, case scenarios, and direct observation only methods compared with direct observation with re-examination by a higher-level clinician, and discusses the relative strengths and weaknesses of the four assessment methods in the Malawi context. [adapted from author]

This work reports the results of semi-structured interviews with 15 international stakeholders, selected because of their experiences in community health worker program implementation, to elicit their views on strategies that could increase community health worker motivation and retention. [from abstract]

This article describes community health workers in government community case management programs for child survival across sub-Saharan Africa. [from abstract]

Community case management (CCM) is a promising task-shifting strategy for expanding treatment of childhood illness that is increasingly adopted by low-income countries. This study uses qualitative methods to explore health workers’ and managers’ perceptions about CCM provided by health surveillance assistants during the program’s first year in Malawi. [adapted from abstract]

This paper documents progress in the scale up of a program to train an existing cadre of community based health workers, known as health surveillance assistants, to provide integrated community case management of childhood illness between 2008 and 2011. It describes some critical challenges that affect the effectiveness and sustainability of the program, and proposes solutions. [adapted from introduction]

This article assessed how a program for integrated community case management (iCCM) for children under 5 years addresses newborn care in three mid-western districts through document reviews, structured interviews, and focus group discussions with village health team members trained in iCCM, caregivers, and other stakeholders. [adapted from abstract]

This study assessed the potential differences between urban and rural areas in the implementation of community case management is implemented for malaria and pneumonia and how community health workers are being used alongside other partners in health care provision. [adapted from introduction]

This article summarizes the key role that lady health workers play in polio eradication; outlines the problems faced by these workers such as the risk to their lives through shootings and bombings, the lack of a living wage and dearth of advancement opportunities; and offers suggestions to improve the situation.

This review reports findings on a systematic review analyzing the effectiveness of preventive interventions delivered by community health workers for maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries. [from abstract]

This study investigated the acceptance of home-based counselling and testing by lay counselors, its equity in uptake and the effect of negative life events with a cluster-randomized trial. [adapted from abstract]

This study explores whether and how socio-cultural factors such as influence of gendered norms and extended family relationships impact lady health workers’ home-visit rates. [adapted from abstract]

This report is an interim summary of ongoing supply chain strengthening interventions focused on community health workers in Mozambique. The piloting of these interventions aims to improve the performance of the supply chain that provides these community health workers with antimalarial drugs, rapid diagnostic tests, male condoms, and essential medicines for a variety of treatments. [from summary]

The intent of this report was to conduct extensive literature reviews on community health worker models that have been proven to work and then share those strategies with rural communities so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. [from introduction]

This article discusses the emergence of community health workers as a focal point of international discussions of primary health care systems and the way that community health worker programs have changed accordingly. [adapted from author]

This study evaluated the effect of a program that trained community health nurses and relocated them to the community to provide door-to-door services on the level of male involvement in family planning services. [adapted from author]

This article describes the strategies, human resource developments, service delivery modalities, progress in service coverage, and the challenges in the implementation of the Health Extension Program, a a primary care delivery strategy, to address the challenges and achieve the World Health Organization Millennium Development Goals within a context of limited resources in Ethiopia. [adapted from abstract]

Community-based maternal and newborn care programs with postnatal home visits from providers who can deliver preventive or curative services that save lives have been tested in Bangladesh, Malawi, and Nepal. This paper examines coverage and content of home visits in pilot areas and factors associated with receipt of postnatal visits. [adapted from abstract]

This guidance document is for use principally by the district experts, heath extension supervisors and health extension workers all over the country as training on the health information systems requirements for local (community level) data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination, as well as linking to the national health management and information systems. [adapted from publisher]

This study was carried out to assess the quality of care provided by Health Surveillance Assistants—a cadre of community-based health workers—as part of a national scale-up of community case management of childhood illness in Malawi. [from abstract]

This study aimed to identify determinants of caregivers’ use of village malaria workers services for childhood illness and caregivers’ knowledge of malaria management. [adapted from abstract]

High levels of unmet need for family planning and high contraceptive discontinuation rates persist in Jordan, prompting the initiation a client-centered family planning service program with community-based activities to encourage women with unmet need to visit health centers, which was evaluated in this study. [adapted from abstract]

The Ministry of Health in Zambia developed a strategy to integrate community health workers into national health plans by creating a new group of community health assistants. The aim of the paper is to analyse the policy development process and the factors that influenced its evolution and content. [adapted from abstract]

This study reviewed the evidence for the use of mobile technology by community health workers to identify opportunities and challenges for strengthening health systems in resource-constrained settings. [from abstract]

This article reports on an intervention to enhance the knowledge and behavior of community health workers on providing adequate
education to patients on malaria. [adapted from author]

This article describes the Morang Innovative Neonatal Intervention
(MINI), which tested a replicable model for the community management of neonatal infections within the existing government health system through the use of female community health volunteers. [adapted from author]

This review was designed to find evidence of the effectiveness of CHWs in providing basic preventive and curative MNCH interventions, and to identify the factors that are crucial to their performance. [from abstract]

This study assessed the quality of care provided by community health workers in managing cases of severe acute malnutrition according to a treatment algorithm. [from abstract]

This study tested a home-visits strategy to improve neonatal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa by assessing the effect on all-cause neonatal mortality rate and essential newborn-care practices after community-based surveillance volunteers were trained to identify pregnant women in their community and to make two home visits during pregnancy and three in the first week of life to promote essential newborn-care practices. [adapted from summary]

This interview with Shaheen Hussain of Pakistan tells the story of how she became a field-based health educator with a social franchise of private reproductive health care providers and is a testimony of how this program not only touches the lives of the women who receive the reproductive health services but also of the health educators themselves.

This study attempts to gather information on health care aides, a cadre that constitutes a significant component of the health care labor force providing home and community care in Canada, to fill gaps in basic information about this component of the workforce including motivations, retention, and adequacy of their training. [adapted from author]