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By: Maryse Kok, Ph.D., KIT Royal Tropical Institute On the 25th of November 2020, the Thematic Working Group organized a session titled  ‘Supporting and strengthening the role of community health workers in health system development’  for the online Health Systems Global Symposium. This session, which focused on the role of CHWs in fragile and conflict-affected settings, had four speakers and about 65 participants. Readers can watch the session here.  There is a large global body of evidence on CHW programmes. Based on this evidence, the World Health Organization published a guideline on health policy and system support to optimize CHW programmes in 2018. There remains a need to learn more about the role of CHWs, and how effective CHW programmes present in fragile and conflict-affected settings. CHWs play an important role in the provision of community-based services where formal health systems can be (temporarily) weakened or dysfunctional. CHWs and other community-level actors can also play a role in emergency and disaster preparedness and response. We all know that CHWs have been instrumental in the response to disease  outbreaks; most recently in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and currently in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic. CHWs have also proved to…

The Health Systems Global Thematic Working Group (TWG): ‘Supporting and strengthening the role of community health workers in health system development’ will be hosting a panel session at HSR 2020 second phase. The goal of the (TWG) is to support the generation, synthesis and communication of evidence on the roll out and functioning of community health worker (CHW) programmes and to enable learning across diverse geographical and political contexts. In the session the TWG will focus on the role of CHWs in fragile and conflict-affected settings. CHWs play an important role in the provision of community-based services where formal health systems may be (temporarily) weakened or dysfunctional. CHWs and other community-level actors can also play a role in emergency and disaster preparedness and response (disease outbreaks and/or natural disasters). While it is known that CHWs play important roles – preventive, promotive and often also curative – in various fragile contexts, there is limited evidence about specific circumstances and factors that influence CHWs’ work in these contexts. Even more so than in non-fragile settings, health system and community support influence CHW performance. Likewise, a lack of such support can lead to overburdened and stressed CHWs. CHWs’ resilience and coping mechanisms in…