Asia

Making the invisible visible: Developing and evaluating an intervention to raise awareness and reduce lead exposure among children and their caregivers in rural Bangladesh

Prenatal and early childhood exposure to lead can be extremely harmful. As part of an informational childhood development intervention in rural Bangladesh, community health workers (CHWs) delivered lead-exposure information to pregnant women and mothers and then administered surveys to assess knowledge, attitude, and behavior changes. Awareness of the harms of prenatal and … [Read more...] about Making the invisible visible: Developing and evaluating an intervention to raise awareness and reduce lead exposure among children and their caregivers in rural Bangladesh

Community health workers (CHWs) are capable of supporting early cancer detection and management services. The authors of this study, conducted in Bangladesh evaluated the knowledge, attitudes, and practice (KAP) of CHWs related to cancer detection. They found that a majority of CHWs did not receive any cancer training and many were not aware of cancer resources available in … [Read more...] about Cancer related knowledge, attitude, and practice among community health care providers and health assistants in rural Bangladesh

Community health workers (CHWs) are well positioned to play an essential role in the COVID-19 response. The authors of this paper discuss the success of CHWs in the Philippines, highlighting the substantial integration as a critical part of the healthcare workforce which has allowed CHWs to significantly support COVID-19 mitigation efforts. The authors further emphasize that … [Read more...] about Maintaining population health in low‐ and middle‐income countries during the Covid‐19 pandemic: Why we should be investing in Community Health Workers

Because community health workers (CHWs) are key to achieving health equity, governments and CHW program managers are interested in effective ways to scale up CHW programs. Experts developed a framework based off of CHW program scale-up efforts across 7 countries and found that successful scaling of CHW programs was dependent on iterative learning and public health solutions … [Read more...] about The Community Health Systems Reform Cycle: Strengthening the Integration of Community Health Worker Programs Through an Institutional Reform Perspective

In the Philippines, where the healthcare system is decentralized, the support of community health workers (CHWs) to achieve universal health coverage varies. The authors conducted a qualitative study to understand how the lived experiences of CHWs were influenced by varying political and social contexts. They found that across different contexts, financial resource allocation … [Read more...] about Governance of community health worker programs in a decentralized health system: a qualitative study in the Philippines