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CHWs engaged in contact tracing, transport, screening, and follow-up of patients with COVID-19 are at risk of developing psychological distress and mental health symptoms. A mental health response is therefore needed to support CHWs during and after the coronavirus response reaches crisis levels in local regions. This response should recognize the unique needs and challenges of male and female providers. Around the world, some health systems are developing and implementing strategies to offer such support to formal frontline care workers. However, evidence-based guidelines to inform mental health care for CHWs, especially during public health emergencies, remain scarce. How do organisations support the mental health and well-being of community health workers? The George Institute, together with the Health Systems Global Thematic Working Group on Community Health workers, surveyed a CHW program to explore the availability of resources that support the mental wellbeing of CHWs in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We crowdsourced resources via a Google survey from 25th May to 8th June 2020. Overall, 103 participants responded from 23 countries (Figure 1). Sixty-one responses were included in the final analysis as the rest were either duplicates, from representatives of the same organisation, or empty responses. Both…

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. CHWs and the global burden of non-communicable…