Topics: Community health workers, Policy, Training, Scaling up

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Global Health Workforce Alliance’s Task Force for Scaling Up and Training for Health Workers, focusing on countries with a health workforce crisis. The report uses evidence from Brazil, Ethiopia,and India on what can and has been done to expand the education and training of health workers quickly and on a national scale, by national governments as well as education and training bodies. The Task Force estimates it would require US$2.6 billion a year to educate and train 1.5 million additional health workers in Africa.

Region and Country: Uganda

Topics: Community health workers, Family planning

The goal of this intervention was to improve access to contraceptive services in rural Nakasongola, Uganda, two hours north of the capital, by assessing the safety, quality and feasibility of DMPA provision by community reproductive health workers as compared with DMPA provided in clinics. The findings from this research reinforce the wealth of experience from other regions suggesting that well-trained CHWS can safely provide contraceptive injections.

Region and Country: Bangladesh

Topics: Community health workers, Supervision, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

This paper describes a large-scale community-based efficacy trial of chlorhexidine for cleansing the umbilical cord conducted in rural north-eastern Bangladesh. The trial established a two-tiered system of community-based workers: paid community health workers (CHWs) and volunteer village health workers (VHWs). The community-based workers delivered a package of essential maternal and newborn care interventions and one of three umbilical cord-care regimens.

Region and Country: Ghana

Topics: Community health workers, Family planning, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

This article compares the demographic and health impact of deploying health service nurses and volunteers in village locations. The authors found that assigning nurses to community locations to provide basic curative and preventive care substantially reduced childhood mortality and accelerates progress towards attainment of the child survival MDG. Approaches using community volunteers, however, had no impact on mortality.

Region and Country: Ghana

Topics: Community health workers, CHW role, Family planning, Training

This report describes a study conducted in Ghana to explore utilizing Community Health Officers (CHOs) and Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) to increase interest in using IUDs and other long-acting and permanent methods. The study utilized a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design and included two intervention groups (where CHOs and CHVs were given additional training and support) and one comparison group.

Region and Country: Kenya

Topics: Community health workers, Family planning, Scaling up, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

In Kenya, with USAID support, the Population Council's FRONTIERS in Reproductive Health project supported the scale up of a model that enabled women to give birth at home or to be referred to a hospital when attended by a self-employed skilled midwife living in the community. This report describes the project and provides recommendations on skills development for the community midwives in: maintaining quality of care, business skills and support to achieve financial sustainability, and strengthening linkages among midwives, the formal health sector and District Health Management Teams.