This brief discusses how integrating community health worker programs into the health system can help increase access to family planning by bringing information, services, and supplies to women and men in the communities where they live and work, rather than requiring them to visit health facilities. CHWs address geographic, financial, and social barriers in regards to family … [Read more...] about Community Health Workers: Bringing Family Planning Services to Where People Live and Work
Journal articles
Mounting Evidence of the Effectiveness and Versatility of Community Health Workers
Recent years have proven that community health workers serve important roles in healthcare systems, including in the United States. This article briefly discusses the effectiveness and versatility of community health workers and their various roles in healthcare delivery systems. The evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of community health workers in many diverse public … [Read more...] about Mounting Evidence of the Effectiveness and Versatility of Community Health Workers
Evaluation of a mHealth Data Quality Intervention to Improve Documentation of Pregnancy Outcomes by Health Surveillance Assistants in Malawi: A Cluster Randomized Trial
As community health workers gain more and more responsibility amidst shortages of skilled health workers, mobile technology for health (mHealth) is becoming more popular for health care delivery around the globe. In order to better understand the role mHealth applications have among CHWs, researchers tested whether short message services (SMS) could improve the reporting of … [Read more...] about Evaluation of a mHealth Data Quality Intervention to Improve Documentation of Pregnancy Outcomes by Health Surveillance Assistants in Malawi: A Cluster Randomized Trial
Community health worker programmes after the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak
The Ebola virus outbreak in 2013 revealed that health delivery systems in western Africa were not well-equipped to handle such epidemics. This paper argues that robust community health worker programs should be implemented as a strategy for improving global health responses to disasters such as the Ebola outbreak. Because CHWs have built strong relationships with the … [Read more...] about Community health worker programmes after the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak
Enhancing the Supervision of Community Health Workers With WhatsApp Mobile Messaging: Qualitative Findings From 2 Low-Resource Settings in Kenya
Using the popular mobile application WhatsApp, a mobile learning intervention was developed and designed to strengthen supervisory support for CHWs in Kenya. 6 months of conversations were analyzed and CHWs and supervisors interviewed to determine how WhatsApp was used in these settings. This preliminary data suggests that CHWs and their supervisors can be effectively trained … [Read more...] about Enhancing the Supervision of Community Health Workers With WhatsApp Mobile Messaging: Qualitative Findings From 2 Low-Resource Settings in Kenya