The 2nd International Symposium on Community Health workers brought together over 500 participants from 35 countries to explore the theme: ‘Potentials of CHWs in the prevention and control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the context of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).’ The symposium took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh from the 22nd to 24th November, 2019 and was hosted by icddr, b.
Building off the success of the first symposium held in Kampala, Uganda in 2017, the symposium brought together public health practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, implementers, CHWs, students, funders, civil society, and other stakeholders to share learning on community health systems, and program innovations, in a variety of settings including resource-constrained environments such as conflict areas and urban slums. In addition, the symposium explored how health system challenges can be addressed to facilitate program scale-up. The Dhaka Symposium, as with that held in 2017 in Kampala, is part of the Supporting and Strengthening the Role of Community Health Workers in Health System Development Thematic Working Group (TWG) of Health Systems Global (HSG). In this blog, we discuss 2 key themes that emerged from the Bangladesh symposium: CHWs addressing non-communicable diseases and CHWs in special situations.
