Community Health Workers Increase Equity of Health Services

Even though the annual number of child deaths globally has recently fallen below 9 million compared to 19 million in 1960, a great majority of children are still dying from readily preventable or treatable conditions.  Furthermore, there are often large disparities in health outcomes among different populations within a country even those that have seen significant gains in reducing child mortality.   There is growing recognition that the work of community health workers (CHWs) is a proven health intervention that has greatly contributed to this reduction in child mortality rates in many countries.   

The Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP) supported by USAID has 32 active projects in 26 countries, most of which work with CHWs or similar cadre of health care staff at the community level.  This paper reviewed the CSHGP’s work done through CHWs, to bridge the health disparity gap for the most vulnerable populations.  All CSHGP grantees conduct knowledge practices and coverage surveys (KPC) which include baseline and endline data, and several grantees have included wealth assessment indicators in these surveys.  Analyses of this data indicate that programs with CHWs are better able to reach the most vulnerable populations. 

Although there was no direct CHW involvement in the development of this abstract and subsequent presentation, the data gathered is heavily dependent on CHWs.