BACKGROUND Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly recognized as a critical link in improving access to services and achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals. Given the financial and human resources constraints in developing countries, CHWs are expected to do more without necessarily receiving the needed support to do their jobs well. How much can be expected of CHWs b...

BACKGROUND Over thirty years have passed since the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care in 1978. Many governments in the first decade following the declaration responded by developing national programmes of community health workers (CHWs), but evaluations of these often demonstrated poor outcomes. As many CHW programmes have responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, international interest in t...

Abstract This is a narrative review whose objective to understand the state of art literature on Community Health Worker (CHW) programs worldwide, identifying their nomenclatures, practices, training, and working conditions. The major concentration CHW can still be found in low- middle-income countries Africa (18), Asia (12), Latin America (05), with few experiences high-income North (02) Ocean...

OBJECTIVE To identify the adequacy of first aid care following minor burns in children. DESIGN Prospective case series. SETTING Emergency Department and Acute Wound Clinic, the Children's Hospital at Westmead (CHW), Sydney. PARTICIPANTS 109 children who presented with minor burns (10% body surface area or less) to CHW over the five months from 2 November 1998 to 23 March 1999. MAIN OUTC...

Background Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) contribute greatly to morbidity and mortality in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Community health workers (CHWs) may improve disease control and medication adherence among patients with NCDs in LMICs, but data are lacking. We assessed the impact of a CHW-led intervention on disease control and adherence among patients with diabetes and...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether the development and implementation of a community health worker (CHW) project in rural Kenya was associated with an increase in knowledge about malaria and the use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) in children under five years of age. METHODS A baseline knowledge and behavior questionnaire, adopted from the Kenyan Demographic Health Survey, was conducted in August...

Many Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems are currently used to support Community Health Workers (CHWs) in impoverished populations. However, the majority of these systems are textbased, making them difficult to use in areas of low literacy. We have added multimedia to one such system, CommCare, to aid CHWs in counseling clients and promoting healthy behaviors in their communi...

BACKGROUND To determine whether training community health workers (CHWs) about hypertension in order to improve adherence to medications is a cost-effective intervention among community members in South Africa. METHODS We used an established Markov model with age-varying probabilities of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events to assess the benefits and costs of using CHW home visits to increase ...

OBJECTIVE Hispanics in the USA are affected by the diabetes epidemic disproportionately, and they consistently have lower access to care, poorer control of the disease and higher risk of complications. This study evaluates whether a community health worker (CHW) intervention may improve clinically relevant markers of diabetes care in adult underserved Hispanics. METHODS AND ANALYSIS The North...