Abstract:

Community health workers (CHWs)—lay people who engage in efforts to improve the health of their communities—have been proposed as a way to fill the global health human resource gap by extending services to hard-to-reach populations in remote areas. This concept note provides a brief history of CHWs, considers issues in CHW program design, and outlines future directions for research and funding.

Learning objectives: This concept note aims to further students’ and instructors’ understanding of community health workers presented in the Cases in Global Health Delivery collection.

Keywords: Human resources, primary care, disease management, monitoring and evaluation, resource allocation, global health policy, community health workers, partnerships