Community health workers (CHWs) serve as a very important direct link between patients, communities and health services. As trusted on-the-ground support to community members, they therefore expand access to essential healthcare information as well as available treatment and prevention programmes.
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This course book provides appropriate, cost-effective, and sustainable targeted learning for the large numbers of emerging community health workers in South Africa.
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Recognizing the importance of the critical role of community health in disaster management, the Amref health Africa has
developed this operational guide to provide policy direction on COVID-19 response at community level. This guide has
been developed in collaboration with all the implementing cou...ntries in supporting prevention and control of COVID-19.
With a strong community COVID-19 response system at community level, we can all contribute to prevention and control
of COVID-19, and thereby improve health and livelihoods for all people
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Health systems the world over have embraced the value of community health workers (CHWs) in extending essential services to the community level, improving health equity and progressing toward universal health coverage. Governments now have an opportunity to institutionalize CHW programs and professi...onalize this essential cadre of the health workforce. What will it take to ensure CHW programs, at scale, can achieve their full potential?
Fortunately, policymakers, funders, NGOs, and other partners seeking to design, revamp, or strengthen CHW programs have a suite of tools at their disposal. One of the longest-standing and most rigorously field-tested of these tools is the Community Health Worker Assessment and Improvement Matrix (CHW AIM), an assessment tool which can be used to design, evaluate and strengthen CHW programs.
You can find this assessment tool on this page here. The matrix is also downloaded on MEDBOX, but if you want, you can register for free and get the matrix. After that follow the points underneath.
accessed 23.07.2021
also available in [Français] [Español]
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CHWs are trained public health workers who serve as a bridge between communities, health care systems, and state health departments.
Resources on this page include:
Online courses, lessons learned, and best practices to help state health departments train and further build capacity for CHWs in th...eir communities.
Training and education materials for CHWs to use within their communities.
accessed 23.07.2021
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Community-based interventions are vital for facilitating poststroke recovery, increasing community participation, and raising awareness about stroke survivors. To optimize recovery and community reintegration, there is a need to understand research findings on community-based interventions that focu...s on stroke survivors and their caregivers. Although nurses and community health workers (CHWs) are commonly involved in community-based interventions, less is known about their roles relative to other poststroke rehabilitation professionals (physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists). Thus, the purpose of this review is to explore research focused on improving community-based stroke recovery for adult stroke survivors, caregivers, or both when delivered by nurses or CHWs.
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Community health workers (CHWs) play a significant role in Primary health Care due to their proximity to households, communities and the health care system. Many studies focus on CHWs and the work they do. However, few have examined their experiences and identity and how that might influence how the...y view and perform their roles. The objectives of the study were to: Describe the role of CHWs in community-based health care in Northern Cape, Identify the perceived barriers and enablers to CHWs role performance, Explore CHWs views regarding the support from the communities and the formal healthcare system in Northern Cape. An exploratory qualitative design using focus groups was adopted. Forty-six (46) CHWs were purposively selected using the critical case sampling approach. Data were collected through three focus group interviews in three regions. Analysis followed the Graneheim & Lundman thematic analysis. Three themes emerged from data: perceived contribution to Primary Health Care, recognition of CHWs role, measures to improve working conditions. Findings showed that CHWs were engaged in various health and social care roles, they believed that they made a significant contribution to PHC, and that the health system persistently relied on their services. The enabler for finding meaning in their work was the positive community response and the good relations they had with the team leaders. The major barrier was the structure of the CHWs programme and the perceived lack of support by the government. The complex issues CHWs address in the community call for a review of their roles and workload as well as the support they receive from the formal healthcare system.
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The object of this bill is to provide for a legal framework to promote the existence of Community Health Workers (CHWs) and to provide for clarity in the role and responsibilities assigned to CHWs in the Health sector and to promote and strengthen service delivery at the Community level. ... The law will regulate training, certification and registration and set minimum qualifications and standards and working conditions for the CHWs.
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Community health workers (CHWs) play a vital role in health service delivery, especially in countries with less resilient health systems. During any outbreak CHWs are relied on to help control the spread. However, they are often the last in line to receive necessary health products and protective eq...uipment, which affects their ability to safely serve their communities.
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This is the sixth of our 11-paper supplement entitled “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of New Era”. Expectations of community health workers (CHWs) have expanded in recent years to encompass a wider array
of services to numerous subpopulations, engage communities to collaborate with and to... assist health systems in responding to complex and sometimes intensive threats. In this paper, we explore a set of key considerations for training of CHWs in response to their enhanced and changing roles and provide actionable recommendations based on
current evidence and case examples for health systems leaders and other stakeholders to utilize.
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This is the ninth paper in our series, “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. Community health workers (CHWs) are in an intermediary position between the health system and the community. While this position provides CHWs with a good platform to improve community health, a major cha...llenge in large-scale CHW programmes is the need for CHWs to establish and maintain benefcial relationships with both sets of actors, who may have diferent expectations and needs. This paper focuses on the quality of CHW relationships with actors at the local level of the national health system and with communities.
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Our OppiaMobile learning platform offers a wide variety of courses on primary health care to enhance the training of health workers worldwide.
These mobile-ready content includes quiz questions, and features video content from Medical Aid Films, Global Health Media Project, and other contributors.... It provides a source of information that can be used for both pre-service and in-service training and to reinforce critical health messages, so that health workers feel confident and empowered to deliver effective services in their communities.
Content adaptation is an iterative process, and Digital Campus will continue to improve its content with additional media and quizzes. All courses are created in Moodle, an open source learning platform used by millions of educators and learners in over 200 countries.
You can find courses for : Antenatal Care ; Postnatal Care; Labor and Delivery Care, Open WASH Courses....
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It provides curriculum development and technology tools to organizations that want to create workers who transform health in America’s communities. Talance, Inc., lends its clients straight-forward strategies that determine what their staff needs to know, how best to reach them and how to spur ong...oing learning. Find resources to help manage your community-focused health worker team and agency in a time of need.
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South Africa has a long history of community health workers (CHWs). It has been a journey that has required balancing constrained resources and competing priorities. CHWs form a bridge between communities and healthcare service provision within health facilities and act as the cornerstone of South A...frica’s Ward-Based Primary Healthcare Outreach Teams. This study aimed to document the CHW policy implementation landscape across six provinces in South Africa and explore the reasons for local adaptation of CHW models and to identify potential barriers and facilitators to implementation of the revised framework to help guide and inform future planning.
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Community health worker teams are potential game-changers in ensuring access to care in vulnerable communities. Who are they? What do they actually do? Can they help South Africa realize universal health coverage? As the proactive arm of the health services, community health workers teams provide ho...usehold and community education, early screening, tracing and referrals for a range of health and social services. There is little local or global evidence on the household services provided by such teams, beyond specific disease-oriented activities such as for HIV and TB. This paper seeks to address this gap.
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Community health workers (CHWs) enable marginalised communities, often experiencing structural poverty, to access healthcare. Trust, important in all patient–provider relationships, is difficult to build in such
communities, particularly when stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and now ...COVID-19, is widespread.
CHWs, responsible for bringing people back into care, must repair trust. In South Africa, where a national CHW programme is being rolled out, marginalised communities have high levels of unemployment, domestic violence and injury. In this complex social environment, we explored CHW workplace trust, interpersonal trust between the patient and CHW, and the institutional trust patients place in the health system
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Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience a high disease burden for epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition.The authors evaluate the cost-effectiveness of community health workers (CHWs) to improve adherence to medication for epilepsy in South Africa. They found that utilizing CHWs to i...mprove medication adherence was cost-effective.
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Despite the increasing uptake of information and communication technologies (ICT) within healthcare services across developing countries, community healthcare workers (CHWs) have limited knowledge to fully utilise computerised clinical systems and mobile apps. The ‘Introduction to Information and ...Communication Technology and eHealth’ course was developed with the aim to provide CHWs in Malawi, Africa, with basic knowledge and computer skills to use digital solutions in healthcare delivery. The course was delivered using a traditional and a blended learning approach.
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This curriculum was designed to train newly recruited health care workers (HCW) in the basic knowledge and skills needed to improve different HIV services within the health facility including identification, linkage, retention and support. In addition to HIV basics, the training has supplementary un...its focused on PMTCT, psychosocial support, opportunistic infections, tuberculosis and HIV, nutrition and family planning in order to give a more well-rounded and comprehensive training of related topics.
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Community health workers (CHWs) play a vital role in facilitating social connectedness, building trust, decrease stigma, and link communities to essential healthcare and social support services. More studies are needed to understand the factors facilitating these interactions among CHWs, clients, an...d community members.
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