Community health workers at the dawn of a new era: 5. Roles and tasks

BACKGROUND

This is the fifth of our 11-paper supplement on "Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era." When planning new community health worker (CHW) roles or expanding existing roles, programme planners need to analyse global and local research evidence and evidence-based guidance on the effectiveness and safety of relevant tasks performed by CHWs.

METHODS

In this paper, we explore key areas of consideration when selecting roles and tasks; present current knowledge regarding these issues; and suggest how decision-makers could consider these issues when assigning tasks in their setting. This paper draws on the chapter "Community Health Worker Roles and Tasks" in Developing and Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs at Scale: A Reference Guide and Case Studies for Program Managers and Policymakers, as well as on a recently published compendium of 29 case studies of national CHW programmes and on recently published literature pertaining to roles and tasks of CHWs.

RESULTS

This paper provides a list of questions that aim to help programme planners think about important issues when determining CHW roles and tasks in their setting. Planners need to assess whether the recommended roles and tasks are considered acceptable and appropriate by their target population and by the CHWs themselves and those who support them. Planners also need to think about the practical and organizational implications of each task for their particular setting with regard to training requirements, health systems support, work location, workload, and programme costs.

CONCLUSION

When planning CHW roles and tasks, planners, programme implementers, and policy-makers should draw from global guidance and research evidence, but they also need to engage with the experiences, needs, and concerns of local communities and health workers. By drawing from both sources of information, they will stand a better chance of developing programmes that are effective in achieving their goals while remaining acceptable to those affected by them, feasible to implement, and sustainable over time.

Planning, implementation and evaluation of antenatal weight management programmes: What are the key components? A mixed methods study

OBJECTIVE

To provide an understanding of the influential components required for the planning, delivery and evaluation of antenatal weight management programmes for women who are overweight or obese.

DESIGN

Two phase sequential explanatory mixed methods design comprising of an online survey and one-to-one telephone interviews.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

All UK maternity services (n = 168) and local government councils (n = 417).

FINDINGS

From the 378 responses, 49 maternity services and 28 local government councils reported having an antenatal weight management programme. Of the 62 responses that specified BMI as an inclusion criterion only two-fifths (40.3% n = 25) adhered to the recommended threshold to include women with a BMI ≥30 kg/m². Although having a multi-disciplinary team was identified as fundamental when planning a programme, only 20.6% (n = 14/68) of the programmes involved service users during the planning phase. How the programme was communicated to a woman was a key factor which determined whether she partook in the programme or not. Having administrative support and staff with expertise in data collection were essential when evaluating a programme. Staff having protected time was identified as important when planning, delivering and evaluating a programme. Three overarching themes were identified from the individual interviews (n = 14) 'choices and decisions', 'demands and resources' and 'engagement and disengagement'.

KEY CONCLUSIONS

National guidelines recommendations regarding service user involvement when planning programmes and the BMI threshold used for inclusion are not being met. In addition to having adequate time, personnel and finances, successful programmes are dependent on the confidence and communication skills of midwives to raise the issue of obesity with these women at the booking appointment. Without staff having the time and necessary knowledge and skills, evaluation, and hence demonstrating programme impact, will likely remain difficult. Organisational support is needed to release resources to plan, deliver and evaluate these programmes. Strategic communication strategies are needed to promote the programme to both women and staff within organisations. Future programmes need to ensure there is engagement with service users from the planning of the programme through to evaluation.

Developing standardized competencies to strengthen immunization systems and workforce

Despite global support for immunization as a core component of the human right to health and the maturity of immunization programs in low- and middle-income countries throughout the world, there is no comprehensive description of the standardized competencies needed for immunization programs at the national, multiple sub-national, and community levels. The lack of defined and standardized competencies means countries have few guidelines to help them address immunization workforce planning, program management, and performance monitoring. Potential consequences resulting from the lack of defined competencies include inadequate or inefficient distribution of resources to support the required functions and difficulties in adequately managing the health workforce. In 2015, an international multi-agency working group convened to define standardized competencies that national immunization programs could adapt for their own workforce planning needs. The working group used a stepwise approach to ensure that the competencies would align with immunization programs' objectives. The first step defined the attributes of a successful immunization program. The group then defined the work functions needed to achieve those attributes. Based on the work functions, the working group defined specific competencies. This process resulted in three products: (1) Attributes of an immunization program described within eight technical domains at four levels within a health system: National, Provincial, District/Local, and Community; (2) 229 distinct functions within those eight domains at each of the four levels; and (3) 242 competencies, representing eight technical domains and two foundational domains (Management and Leadership and Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Program). Currently available as a working draft and being tested with immunization projects in several countries, the final document will be published by WHO as normative guidelines. Vertical immunization programs as well as integrated systems can customize the framework to suit their needs. Standardized competencies can support immunization program improvements and help strengthen effective health systems.

Malaria intervention scale-up in Africa: effectiveness predictions for health programme planning tools, based on dynamic transmission modelling

Background

Scale-up of malaria prevention and treatment needs to continue to further important gains made in the past decade, but national strategies and budget allocations are not always evidence-based. Statistical models were developed summarizing dynamically simulated relations between increases in coverage and intervention impact, to inform a malaria module in the Spectrum health programme planning tool.

Methods

The dynamic Plasmodiumfalciparum transmission model OpenMalaria was used to simulate health effects of scale-up of insecticide-treated net (ITN) usage, indoor residual spraying (IRS), management of uncomplicated malaria cases (CM) and seasonal malaria chemoprophylaxis (SMC) over a 10-year horizon, over a range of settings with stable endemic malaria. Generalized linear regression models (GLMs) were used to summarize determinants of impact across a range of sub-Sahara African settings.

Results

Selected (best) GLMs explained 94–97 % of variation in simulated post-intervention parasite infection prevalence, 86–97 % of variation in case incidence (three age groups, three 3-year horizons), and 74–95 % of variation in malaria mortality. For any given effective population coverage, CM and ITNs were predicted to avert most prevalent infections, cases and deaths, with lower impacts for IRS, and impacts of SMC limited to young children reached. Proportional impacts were larger at lower endemicity, and (except for SMC) largest in low-endemic settings with little seasonality. Incremental health impacts for a given coverage increase started to diminish noticeably at above ~40 % coverage, while in high-endemic settings, CM and ITNs acted in synergy by lowering endemicity. Vector control and CM, by reducing endemicity and acquired immunity, entail a partial rebound in malaria mortality among people above 5 years of age from around 5–7 years following scale-up. SMC does not reduce endemicity, but slightly shifts malaria to older ages by reducing immunity in child cohorts reached.

Conclusion

Health improvements following malaria intervention scale-up vary with endemicity, seasonality, age and time. Statistical models can emulate epidemiological dynamics and inform strategic planning and target setting for malaria control.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12936-016-1461-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.