"'I'm a Health Worker' - Abduaraman Gidi" made by IntraHealth International.
The CHW Hub is a product of the partnership between CHW Central and the Health Systems Global Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Supporting and Strengthening the Role of Community Health Workers in Health System Development.
TWG Participation in the second International Symposium on Community Health Workers
22nd - 24th November 2019, Dhaka, Bangladesh | Theme: Potentials of Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the Context of Universal Health Coverage (UHC)
Photo credit: © Dahiru Ribadu for IDEAS
Community involvement is vital for making progress towards universal coverage of health services for mothers and newborns. Yet communities cannot work in a vacuum if universal coverage is to be achieved. In the Nigerian context, state government engagement is also important to ensure community health services are embedded in the health system and in the state’s health budget. This engagement creates an enabling environment for scale-up and sustainability. These are the interim conclusions of two studies conducted under the IDEAS project[ii], one quantitative and one qualitative, that evaluated a Village Health Worker scheme in Gombe State, northeast Nigeria.
Over the last 10 years, there has been little change in the maternal mortality ratio in Nigeria, and it remains high at 814 per 100,000 live births in 2015[iii]. In largely rural Gombe State, contributing factors include limited uptake of and access to health services, which hamper universal coverage. Moreover, low adult literacy rates (63.9 in any language and 34.5 in English[iv]) restrict community participation for health, particularly among women.
Announcing a special collection of articles on community health workers
This qualitative resource explores the gendered dynamics of the CHW program in Afghanistan. It examines how broader societal gender norms affect the CHW program and suggests that the gendered division of health labour may provide opportunities for women's empowerment.
Community health workers (CHWs) improve access to quality health services at the community level. Despite the critical role that CHWs play, governments often have limited insight into their activities, the quality of their services, the conditions of the communities that they serve, and how best to link these CHWs and their beneficiaries to the larger health system.
This paper estimates the cost of training and deploying paid community health workers in Tanzania. The authors found the estimated cost to be sustainable on a large scale.
This research article examines how community health workers allocate their time during the work day.
Tremendous challenges remain to ensure that the most vulnerable populations, including women, children, and adolescents, are able to enjoy the healthy lives and well-being promised in the Sustainable Development Goals. Much of their poor health is caused by poverty, gender, lack of education, and social marginalization as well as inaccessible healthcare services. Strong, equitable, and well-governed health systems can contribute to sustainably improving their lives.
