Authors: Braun R, Catalani C, Wimbush J, Israelski D.
In low-resource settings, community health workers are frontline providers who shoulder the health service delivery burden. Increasingly, mobile technologies are developed, tested, and deployed with community health workers to facilitate tasks and improve outcomes. We reviewed the evidence for the use of mobile technology by community health workers to identify opportunities and challenges for strengthening health systems in resource-constrained settings. Community health workers have used mobile tools to advance a broad range of health aims throughout the globe, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health. Most commonly, community health workers use mobile technology to collect field-based health data, receive alerts and reminders, facilitate health education sessions, and conduct person-to-person communication. Programmatic efforts to strengthen health service delivery focus on improving adherence to standards and guidelines, community education and training, and programmatic leadership and management practices. Evidence suggests mobile technology presents promising opportunities to improve the range and quality of services provided by community health workers. Programmatic and scientific gaps will need to be addressed by global leaders as they advance the use and assessment of mobile technology tools for community health workers.
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Resource Topic: Behavior Change and Communication, CHW Role, Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Data Collection, Scale-up, mHealth and Technology
Resource Type: Evaluation, Journal articles, Research
Year: 2013
Region:
Country: Global
Publisher May Restrict Access: No