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Makerere University School of Public Health – Uganda, Nottingham Trent University – UK, World Vision and CHW Central are partnering in an initiative to support CHW Visions, a series of interviews with leading academics and thought leaders to help us envision the future of CHWs differently.
Rapid scale-up of the community-based health workforce has been recognized as a global priority for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including target 3.8 to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), in the hardest-to-reach and underserved communities. Scale-up of effective CHW programs has received overwhelming attention over the last 5 years, with a proliferation of academic research, as well as efforts to consolidate key findings, systematic reviews and best practices. The WHO are currently developing guidelines for CHW programs for international use in the SDG era. But how much of the existing research really addresses the full vision that the SDGs force us to consider? As a community, we are finally realising the aspiration of the human right to health as the highest attainable physical and mental health through the channel of the SDGs.
We want to push the barrel of CHW research beyond the bounds of the evidence base – and ask the global community to “Dream Big”. A platform will also be provided to enable young researchers and practitioners to contribute their own “Vision Statements.”
In addition, a thematic discussion on CHWs will take place on the HIFA Project on Community Health Workers from January 16th – February 24th, 2017 in a run up to the Symposium.
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