PHM-Exch> Lay or community health workers can improve the health of children (8)

[Sara Javanparast]

Community Health Worker program in Iran is also an excellent example of successful and sustained program commenced 30 years ago. CHWs are selected and supported by their own community as well as health system. They are trained, supervised and paid by health system which seem to be important factors in their sustainability. CHWs have had strong contribution to rural health in Iran and in norrowing the rural-urban gap in many health indicators.

Currently our research team is undertaking a study (as part of the Teasdale-Corti project) to investigate the contribution of CHWs to the implementation of comprehensive primary health care in rural settings of Iran which the results could contribute to the knowledge in this area.

Sara Javanparast
Discipline of Public Health
Flinders Univeristy
Australia


________________________________
From: phm-exchange-bounces at phm.phmovement.org [phm-exchange-bounces at phm.phmovement.org] On Behalf Of Claudio Schuftan [cschuftan at phmovement.org]
Sent: Monday, 12 April 2010 7:07 PM
To: phm-exchange at phm.phmovement.org
Subject: PHM-Exch> Lay or community health workers can improve the health of children (8)



----------
From: Wendy Holmes holmes at burnet.edu.au<mailto:holmes at burnet.edu.au>

Another example is the volunteer posyandu cadres in Indonesia, sustained for over 20 years, not perfect, varied experiences in different parts of Indonesia and at different times, but they have made a huge contribution.

I would also challenge the suggestion that lay health workers should not be supported by government, in addition to support from the community.  Governments carry the responsibility for providing health care to their citizens - it is reasonable for them to play a role in supporting, training, supervising and providing incentives, or allowances, to lay or community health workers.

But this is a big topic - a useful paper that complements the Cochrane review was prepared by Uta Lehmann and David Sanders for WHO in 2007: Community health workers: What do we know about them? The state of the evidence on programmes, activities, costs and impact on health outcomes of using community health workers.  A report by Uta Lehmann and David Sanders, School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, available at: www.who.int/hrh/documents/community_health_workers.pdf<http://www.who.int/hrh/documents/community_health_workers.pdf>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20100413/91287e72/attachment-0001.html>