Community Health Workers and Prevention: How to measure effectiveness of preventive community health programs centered on CHW

In many countries, community health workers CCHW), either paid or volunteer are the main communication agents to disseminate preventive messages and calls to action to change personal behaviors and create healthy habits. Country-led development is the creation of long-term development programs led and implemented by national staff empowered to do their job through access to the right information and equipped with state-of-the-art tools. Can CHW also be an instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs and use the information to improve the country-led programs? For lasting global health and development results, CHW must be empowered with the right information and the right tools to implement and monitor prevention programs and report results and achievements to their reference facilities. This presentation will discuss the role of CHW in Nigeria when empowered with the right tools and the right information to implement and measure the effectiveness of their program using a simple and powerful tool: a checklist. This one page checklist allows CHW to measure the effectiveness of their preventive messages and adapt them for maximum results. With an effective tool to measure the effectiveness of malaria and HIV prevention and messages on hand washing and adequate nutrition, CHW receive immediate feedback on the challenges their communities face to adopt their messages and the satisfaction on a job well done that motivates them to keep improving their job. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation results of the use of the checklist are presented and steps to country-led development community health programs are discussed.