Features

The Club des Amis Damien (CAD) is a Congolese non-governmental organization made up of community-based volunteer members. CAD’s members are former tuberculosis (TB) patients who work as community health workers for the organization. Rebecca Furth (RF) from Initiatives Inc. sat down with CAD’s National Secretary, Maxime Lunga (ML), to learn…

BRAC has been recruiting and training Shasthya Shebikas (SS), front line health workers, in Bangladesh since 1972.  Currently 97,000 Shasthya Shebikas and an additional 10,000 Shasthya Komi are providing a multitude of health services in Bangladesh’s communities. For Tuberculosis, they provide TB information, identify TB cases and administer Directly Observed…

The Partners In Health (PIH) model of partnering with community health workers (CHWs) in tuberculosis (TB) programs evolved out of our early experiences in the Central Plateau of Haiti.  In the 1980’s, PIH co-founders Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl recognized that their first efforts to provide care for tuberculosis-infected patients…

This reprinted article from the Kaiser Foundation describes the work of CHWs in communities from Ethiopia to Virginia. This story was produced in collaboration with the Atlantic ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Hermon Girma is stirring bean stew over a wood-fed stove when she hears someone at the gate. She sends…

A 2009 review by O’Brien et al on the Role Development of CHWs tries to answer that question. For community health workers to be effective at their jobs, the authors contend that the selection of CHWs, the quality of training and the clarity of their role are critical factors.  If…