One Million Community Health Workers

This June a groundbreaking article was published in PLoS One, confirming not only the success of community health workers (CHWs) in low-resource environments, but also the ways that new mobile health technologies can facilitate the improvement and expansion of CHW programs. The article, “Community Health Workers and Mobile Technology: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” comprehensively analyzes the cross-disciplinary body of work written about CHWs and CHW programs since 2000.

The PLoS One study draws on articles from the fields of medicine, public health, engineering, and the social sciences, and finds that “[CHWs] have used mobile tools to advance a broad range of health aims throughout the globe, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health.” The authors conclude that “use of mobile technology can potentially enhance the capacity of CHWs to take on new and challenging tasks, particularly collecting complete, timely and accurate health data for field-based research and providing health care services in the field with fewer errors.”

Despite advances in reaching remote communities, there are many opportunities for improvement and expansion of CHW programs, especially related to the development of new tools and evidence-based policy to “guide global health policy and implementation.” This is where the One Million Community Health Workers (1mCHW) Campaign comes into play. By coordinating existing CHW programs with African governments, and making it clear where the core interests of local and global organizations fit into national frameworks, 1mCHW is developing the tools necessary to guide CHW policies. Moreover, 1mCHW is developing an “Operations Room,” an online dashboard to provide comprehensive information about CHW activities on the ground. The “Operations Room” will chart progress in different countries and contain the compiled evidence demanded by the article’s authors to deepen our understanding of CHW programs and of the most effective means of implementation.

We know the plan works: a comprehensive review of CHW literature conclusively conveys the effectiveness of CHW programs, especially given the recent access to mobile technologies. 1mCHW will help turn this promising literature into life-saving results on the ground.