Authors: Frida Kasteng, Stella Settumba, Karin Källander, Anna Vassall
Community health worker (CHW) programmes are currently being scaled-up in sub-Saharan Africa to improve access to healthcare. CHWs are often volunteers; from an economic perspective, this raises considerations whether reliance on an unpaid workforce is sustainable and how to appropriately cost and value the work of CHWs. Both these questions can be informed by an understanding of CHWs’ workload, their opportunity costs of time and the perceived benefits of being a CHW. However, to date few studies have fully explored the methodological challenges in valuing CHW time.
The authors examined the costs and benefits of volunteering in a sample of 45 CHWs providing integrated community case management of common childhood illnesses in rural Uganda in February 2012 using different methods. The authors assessed the value of CHW time using the minimum public sector salary rate and a CHW-elicited replacement wage, as well as the opportunity cost of time based on CHW-estimated annual income and alternative work opportunities, respectively.
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Resource Topic: Community Case Management, Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Motivation/incentives, Scale-up
Resource Type: Research
Year: 2015
Region: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
Country: Uganda
Publisher May Restrict Access: No