Systematising governance of CHW programmes
“Community Health Worker (CHW) programmes need to be appropriately governed if they are to succeed”. But what does this entail? An original article suggests a ‘framework’ that outlines a set of principles that could best support and strengthen governance functions for CHW programmes at scale.
CITATION: Schneider H. The governance of national community health worker programmes in low- and middle-income countries: an empirically based framework of governance principles, purposes and tasks. Int J Health Policy Manag.
2018;x(x):x–x. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2018.92
Full text: http://www.ijhpm.com/article_3544_4598093150e92ebe0764ecbb20660a49.pdf
Implications for policy makers
• Policy-makers are increasingly being asked to consider, develop or strengthen community health worker (CHW) programmes as part of their mandates.
• Long-standing experience suggests that national CHW programmes are neither cheap nor simple, yet there is relatively little guidance on how best to design and implement such programmes so that they sustainably achieve their goals.
• The aim of the framework presented in this paper is to systematise and organise the tasks of CHW programme governance as they present themselves to the stewards of these programmes, most often public sector managers.
• In doing so it seeks to provide a better appreciation of CHW programme governance functions across levels of the health system.
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Best wishes, Neil
Coordinator, HIFA Project on Community Health Workers
http://www.hifa.org/projects/community-health-workers