A methodology to assess impact of promotores (Community Health Workers)

Sacred Valley Health's (SVH) CHWs or “promotores” are trained to support the community health needs of high altitude, resource poor communities within the Ollantaytambo district of the Sacred Valley, Peru. SVH devised a method to measure the impact of rural CHWs by launching a community-based study to identify and measure the incidence of two health indicators. The goals were (1) to focus future CHW training topics on study results and (2) to re-implement the study after one-year to compare incidence rates of health indicators and assess if CHWs have impacted the overall community health. The study was piloted in a rural, indigenous (Quechan) community over an eight-week period. The idea was presented to and adopted by the community. Given standardized definitions of prolonged cough and diarrhea each participating household self-reported on picture-based tally boards. These health indicators were selected based on aggregated data gathered from medical campaigns. CHWs and SVH collaborated to gather data in two-week increments during home visits and at community meetings. Variables influencing the effectiveness of the study included language barriers among Spanish and Quechua speakers, agrarian lifestyle (rainy season, movement of animals), literacy, cultural differences in defining illness, and methods of data acquisition. Future studies will account for the aforementioned variables to increase the validity of the data. Additionally, reflections and input from the CHWs will be used to further enhance study design and implementation. This presentation will include comments by the CHWs on the poster summarizing their perspectives and experiences.