One Million Community Health Workers

The One Million Community Health Workers (1mCHW) Campaign is pleased to announce that we have partnered with mPowering Frontline Health Workers (mPowering) to assist the Ghanaian Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ghana Health Service (GHS) accelerate the implementation of its national CHW program! Since Ghana publicly released their CHW Roadmap in March 2014, the MOH and GHS have been hard at work to plan and strategize the implementation of their national CHW program. Even though the MOH and GHS have invested both manpower and some financing, implementing a CHW program at national scale is a daunting task – but it can be made much more surmountable with the assistance of external partners, like the Campaign and mPowering.

In a blog post we wrote in March, we detailed the development and content of Ghana’s CHW Roadmap. This Roadmap, which was the first to be released publicly through the Campaign’s website, details the technical model of the CHW program including final services to be delivered, essential supplies package, training requirements, terms of references, and management structure. Fundamental to Ghana’s CHW program is their mobile/electronic health (m/eHealth) strategy. mHealth for CHWs will ensure that all CHWs in Ghana are registered and enable data collection at the community level, active case management, training refreshment, and real-time monitoring.

This comprehensive CHW program was shaped through collaborative input from multiple departments of the MOH, GHS, NGOs, academia, global funding agencies, and the private sector. To build on this foundation and ensure that Ghana’s national CHW program is successful, continuing and expanding these collaborations is critical. The first of these major collaborations is the partnership between the 1mCHW Campaign and mPowering, which will focus on helping Ghana develop the CHW program’s m/eHealth strategy.

mPowering is a three-year public-private partnership between USAID and the mHealth Alliance.  The mission of this innovative public-private partnership is to improve child health by advancing the use of mobile technology by health workers around the world. mPowering brings technical and advisory expertise in the field of mHealth. This knowledge, coupled with the Campaign’s expertise in CHW systems, will provide Ghana with the resources necessary to develop a detailed national mHealth strategy for CHWs that is in line with Ghana’s existing national m/eHealth activities. To assist in the development of this strategy, 1mCHW Campaign and mPowering will assist the Ghanaian MOH in some of the following ways:

1. Hold stakeholder meetings to understand the cost of mHealth and investment required for the m/eHealth in Ghana’s CHW program.
2. Provide advice and recommendations to the Ghanaian MOH on the costs of the m/eHealth component of the CHW program.
3. Develop a business case for mobile operators.
4. Develop a draft model for building a national mHealth strategy for the Ghanaian CHW program that will include components such as registration, training, service delivery, supervision, data collection etc.
5. Develop a detailed CHW mHealth implementation strategy with the Ghanaian MOH and Ghana Health Service.
6. Approach prospective donors and funders to mobilize resourcesfor the implementation of Ghana’s CHW Roadmap.

Through this partnership, the 1mCHW Campaign, mPowering Frontline Health Workers, and the Ghanaian MOH and GHS will begin to actualize Ghana’s CHW program and continue working towards improving health access and coverage across Ghana so that they can meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4, 5, and 6 and continue to create universal healthcoverage across Ghana post 2015.

To learn more about mPowering Frontline Health Workers, click here.