BLOG: “How to support and strengthen role of Community Health Workers in health systems development”

News

Recently, a new Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Community Health Workers (CHWs) has been established under Health Systems Global. KIT has taken this initiative together with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, under the flag of REACHOUT. All researchers, policy makers and programme managers working with CHWs are invited to join and is now meeting for the first time at Health Systems Research 2014 Global conference (HSR2014).

The main objective of this TWG is to share knowledge on CHW programmes and to translate research into policy and practice. The group has conducted a webinar and established LinkedIn and a Google group communication channel to share information.

Great Start

Maryse Kok, advisor Health at KIT: “How exciting, this morning 30 September, to meet members of the TWGs from all over the world who are currently attending HSR2014 in Cape Town, South Africa. As one of the newest groups, we were proud to welcome about 45 participants!

Fostering partnership & Evidence into action

We had lively discussions about the research agenda on CHWs and suggestions were made on what the group can do to foster partnerships and bring evidence into action: sharing top 5 news on CHWs regularly, writing of evidence briefs, ensuring the voice of CHW themselves and much more.

Building a community

Many participants, researching and implementing CHW programmes all around the world, were willing to invest in the TWG, as a “community” to share experience and information. The atmosphere was energetic, dynamic and motivated me personally to keep on the work KIT is doing in the research on how to improve performance of CHWs.

Join us

To become member of the Thematic Working Group “Supporting and strengthening the role of Community Health Workers in health systems development” , please e-mail: faye.moody@lstmed.ac.uk