Tremendous challenges remain to ensure that the most vulnerable populations, including women, children, and adolescents, are able to enjoy the healthy lives and well-being promised in the Sustainable Development Goals. Much of their poor health is caused by poverty, gender, lack of education, and social marginalization as well as inaccessible healthcare services. Strong, … [Read more...] about Book: Healthy Lives for Vulnerable Women and Children: Applying Health Systems Research
Infectious/communicable diseases
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
Community Change Agents: “Doctors” of Malaria Information
Presented at the International Social and Behavioral Change Communication Summit in Ethiopia in February 2016, Ainslie’s PowerPoint presentation goes into detail about the COMMIT Program, a behavior change communication project for malaria prevention, treatment, and control in Tanzania. Key to the project is the utilization of Community Change Agents who communicated the … [Read more...] about Community Change Agents: “Doctors” of Malaria Information
Impact of Community-Based DOT on Tuberculosis Treatment Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death throughout the globe, though treatment exists and is effective. In order to combat drug resistant tuberculosis, community-based directly observed treatment (DOT) is recommended by the World Health Organization, in which a supervisor observes the patient swallow their anti-tuberculosis medication. While highly praised, this … [Read more...] about Impact of Community-Based DOT on Tuberculosis Treatment Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
The use of counting beads to improve the classification of fast breathing in low-resource settings: a multi-country review
To decrease child mortality due to common but life-threatening illnesses, community health workers (CHWs) are trained to assess, classify and treat sick children. For pneumonia, CHWs are trained to count the respiratory rate of a child with cough and/or difficulty breathing, and determine whether the child has fast breathing or not based on how the child’s breath count relates … [Read more...] about The use of counting beads to improve the classification of fast breathing in low-resource settings: a multi-country review