Announcing a special article collection on community health workers

By Kate Hawkins*

One of the main purposes of the Thematic Working Group on Community Health Workers is to support the generation of evidence to inform the scale up of Community Health Worker programmes which is pragmatic and contextually embedded. To try and publish and promote good work in this area we partnered with Human Resources for Health on a thematic series. We are delighted to announce that the first papers from the article collection are out now!

What are people saying?

There are papers from a range countries about people working in quite different contexts and we also have articles which take an international or overarching approach. What seems clear is that CHW programme scale up is challenging in the face of health systems constraints and that there is no blue print approach. However, systematic and systemic interventions, for example related to human resource management or the governance of programmes is needed. Another key message is that it is important to, “put the human into human resources”, and that people-centred health systems need to understand community health workers as people with their own challenges, strengths and motivations. These can relate to incentives in the health system as well as the ways that they relate to community members and institutions. We also have a lot to learn about the costs of CHW programmes and how best to asses these.

Summary of the available papers

• Costs and cost-effectiveness of community health workers: evidence from a literature review

• Supervision of community health workers in Mozambique: a qualitative study of factors influencing motivation and programme implementation

• Snap shots from a photo competition: what does it reveal about close-to-community providers, gender and power in health systems?

• Exploring competing experiences and expectations of the revitalized community health worker programme in Mozambique: an equity analysis

• Strategic partnering to improve community health worker programming and performance: features of a community-health system integrated approach

• Using a human resource management approach to support community health workers: experiences from five African countries

• Exploring the context in which different close-to-community sexual and reproductive health service providers operate in Bangladesh: a qualitative study

• Supporting close-to-community providers through a community health system approach: case examples from Ethiopia and Tanzania

• Initial experiences and innovations in supervising community health workers for maternal, newborn, and child health in Morogoro region, Tanzania 

• Motivation and satisfaction among community health workers in Morogoro Region, Tanzania: Nuanced needs and varied ambitions 

• Selection and performance of village health teams (VHTs) in Uganda: Lessons from the natural helper model of health promotion 

• A qualitative assessment of health extension workers’ relationship with the community and health sector in Ethiopia: Opportunities for enhancing maternal health performance

What next?

The thematic series is not finished yet and will run for some time to come. So look out for new papers and the editorial which brings together learning on what has been published so far. We have also asked some of the authors to tell us a bit more about their work. So expect blogs and other communications from the Group over the coming months.

* Kate Hawkins is Director of Pamoja Communications. She also works for the REACHOUT Consortium and is the secretary of the Health Systems Global Thematic Working Group on Community Health Workers.

Photo credit: Pippa Ranger / Department for International Development

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