The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) affords opportunities to sustain the role of community health workers (CHWs). Among myriad strategies encouraged by PPACA are prevention and care coordination, particularly for chronic diseases, chief drivers of increased health care costs. Prevention and care coordination are functions that have been performed by CHWs for … [Read more...] about Transforming the delivery of care in the post-health reform era: what role will community health workers play?
Policy
Developing the national community health assistant strategy in Zambia: a policy analysis.
In 2010, the Ministry of Health in Zambia developed the National Community Health Assistant strategy, aiming to integrate community health workers (CHWs) into national health plans by creating a new group of workers, called community health assistants (CHAs). The aim of the paper is to analyse the CHA policy development process and the factors that influenced its evolution and … [Read more...] about Developing the national community health assistant strategy in Zambia: a policy analysis.
Community health workers: social justice and policy advocates for community health and well-being.
Community health workers are resources to their communities and to the advocacy and policy world on several levels. Community health workers can connect people to health care and collect information relevant to policy. They are natural researchers who, as a result of direct interaction with the populations they serve, can recount the realities of exclusion and propose remedies … [Read more...] about Community health workers: social justice and policy advocates for community health and well-being.
Learning from the Brazilian community health worker model in North Wales.
Health policymakers in many countries are looking at ways of increasing health care coverage by scaling up the deployment of community health workers. Traditionally this has been seen as an option for low and middle income countries with inadequate numbers of trained health professionals. In this commentary, we describe the rationale for the UK to learn from Brazil's scaled-up … [Read more...] about Learning from the Brazilian community health worker model in North Wales.
Measuring return on investment of outreach by community health workers.
Community health workers (CHWs) are effective in improving access to health care, promoting client knowledge and behavior change, and contributing to improved health status of individuals. However, few outreach programs have evaluated the financial impact of CHWs on health care systems and policies. A longitudinal repeated measures design was used to assess the return on … [Read more...] about Measuring return on investment of outreach by community health workers.