This paper examines the perspective of community members on the Children's Oral Health Initiative (COHI) who have children enrolled in the program through interviews. The authors found that local, community-based oral health prevention programs are perceived by the community to be beneficial.
The authors conducted a mixed-methods study to understand the roles of community health workers and design a standardized training curriculum. An organizational survey and discussion groups resulted in the development of a core set of competencies to incorporate into a Healthy Start community health workers training program.
This randomized controlled study looked at the feasibility of incorporating community health workers into a team leading diabetes group visits. The authors concluded that integrating community health workers into diabetes group visit program is a feasible, effect intervention.
In July of 2012, CARE partnered with other organizations to provide 120 million women and girls with family planning information and services by the year 2020. This report reflects on the first half of the initiative, evaluating what has been accomplished thus far. The evaluation shows that many barriers to providing women and girls with more family planning support remain.
This article explains the current state and focus of the U.S. healthcare system and describes it’s shortcomings. The authors propose a widening of definitions in regards to product, place, and provider in an effort to allow for cheaper health interventions such as community health worker programs. This article also evaluates the different ways in which healthcare in the U.S.
The focus of this report is on the financial sustainability of Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in the state of Connecticut. The goal of this research is to find a way in which Connecticut can develop an effective program that utilizes CHWs to improve patient health outcomes and achieve a level of positive financial return. This report worked within the boundaries of Connecticut’s State Innovation Model (SIM), a federally funded grant to aid in transforming healthcare systems from state to state, in order to ensure a possible funding source for the resulting new programs. The repor
This article synthesizes the qualitative evidence of the effectiveness of lay health workers (LHWs) as well as the factors affecting implementation of LHW programs for maternal and child health. 53 studies were included primarily describing the experiences of LHWs, program recipients, and other health workers. Results from the review suggest that rather than being seen as a lesser trained health worker, LHWs may represent a different and sometimes preferred type of health worker. The close relationship between LHWs and recipients is a program strength.
Research has demonstrated that task shifting, including the use of CHWs to deliver care, can improve population health. This systematic review examines whether task shifting in LMICs results in efficiency improvements by achieving cost savings. The authors identified 794 articles, and included 34 in the study. They found that substantial evidence exists for achieving cost savings and efficiency improvements from task shifting activities related to tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Palazuelos, Partners in Health, and Dr.