Community Health Workers

by Carolyne Musyoka, Learning & Impact Intern, and Gladys Onyango, Director of Program Learning & Impact Photos courtesy of Wandikweza Approximately 67 percent of the global population have received a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to date, representing a remarkable achievement in the drive to accelerate the end of COVID-19…

By Fatoumata Bah, Program Supervisor, AIRnyc With the start of the pandemic came instability. My South Bronx neighborhood rarely experiences change, so the pandemic threw our community for a loop. Everything was unknown, new information felt unreliable, and our futures were unpredictable. We must have heard, “don’t know” over a…

Community health workers provide essential healthcare for three million Malians. By Mackenzie Schiff “Our health system starts with community health workers,” says Vamara Abdoul Koné, mayor of Kapolondougou, Mali. “If community health workers fail, the entire health system fails.” ESSENTIAL COMMUNITY HEALTHCARE The Malian government increased its investment in essential…

What have we done to the biggest cadre of health workers in India? She is a rural health worker. She walks on foot all day in her village, often a daily walk of 4 or 5 kilometers. She checks on the health of people, door-to-door, especially pregnant women, infants and…

In journalism, listening is so core to our day-to-day work that it can be easy for us to assume that we’ve mastered it when we actually still have a lot to learn. At Hearken’s 2019 Engagement Innovation Summit, community health workers from the Penn Center for Community Health Workers taught…

July 28, 2021, was Day 1 of the Unity National Community Health Worker conference (Unity), with the bonus of the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) second annual meeting. At Unity, community health workers (CHWs) convened to support communities in achieving health, equity, and social justice. Over 800 CHWs…

Behavioral Science for improving community health worker performance — By Franciscah Nzanga (1), Tabitha Mberi (1), Stephen Odindo (1), Isaac Mwangi (1), Beatrice Wasunna (2) and Nengapate Kuria (3) The global movement towards Universal Health Care (UHC) is underpinned by sustainable development goal three, which champions access to quality and affordable healthcare as a vital step towards a peaceful…

Most of us live in a community and belong to overlapping groups of people. While academic and medical disciplines define community health in various ways, the idea of community members contributing to improved health is relatively simple. It is not a radical idea: home remedies and help from traditional health…

Eddine Sarroukh, Senior Advisor Innovation and Technology, UNDP Kenya Back in 1987, the World Health Organization launched the Safe Motherhood Initiative in Kenya, a global movement to reduce maternal mortality. Over the last 30 years, the maternal healthcare field has made considerable progress, though more work needs to be done…