Challenges Facing Successful Scaling Up of Effective Screening for Cardiovascular Disease by Community Health Workers in Mexico and South Africa: Policy Implications

Authors: Abrahams-Gessel S, CA Denman, Gaziano TA, Levitt NS, and Puoane T

The integration of community health workers (CHWs) into primary and secondary prevention functions in health programs and services delivery in Mexico and South Africa has been demonstrated to be effective. This paper aims to identify barriers and challenges to these types of CHW programs by comparing the experiences of earlier studies with successful programs. Barriers reviewed include scale up issues, training and certification issues, integration issues, and funding gaps. The authors use this information to make policy recommendations about task-sharing CHW programs.