The authors present a model for the development of sustainable primary health care in village communities in Honduras through the training and support of community health workers.
Health Workforce
The delivery of undergraduate clinical education in underserved areas is increasing in various contexts across the world in response to local workforce needs. A collective understanding of the impact of these placements is lacking. Previous reviews have often taken a positivist approach by only looking at outcome measures. This review addresses the question: What are the strengths and weaknesses for medical students and supervisors of community placements in underserved areas?
Both developed and developing countries report geographically skewed distributions of healthcare professionals, favouring urban and wealthy areas, despite the fact that people in rural communities experience more health related problems. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the most important studies addressing the recruitment and retention of doctors to rural and remote areas.
This review intends to examine contextual factors affecting motivation and retention of Village Health Workers in their roles and identify recommendations and strategies to motivate and retain them in the systems.
This paper reports on the physician’s perspective of Ecuador’s compulsory service program, known as medicatura rural.
Africa bears 24% of the global burden of disease but has only 3% of the world’s health workers. Substantial variation in health worker performance adds to the negative impact of this significant shortfall. The authors therefore sought to identify interventions implemented in sub-Saharan African aiming to improve health worker performance and the contextual factors likely to influence local effectiveness.
This study is part of a larger implementation research project called Nigraan, which is intervening on supportive supervision in the Lady Health Worker Programme to improve community case management of pneumonia and diarrhea in rural Pakistan. This study explored the motivation of Lady Health Supervisors, a cadre of community health workers, with particular attention to their views on supportive supervision.
This study was undertaken to assess the scope and nature of community-based education for various health worker cadres in Uganda.
This paper assessed the contributions of AMW to maternal and child health services, factors influencing their productivity and their willingness to serve the community.
Access to the physician training program was broadened by admitting students who obtained at least Grade C (60%) in mathematics and physical science at standard grade, and who demonstrated appropriate personal attributes. An innovative curriculum, combining problem-based learning with community-based education (PBL/CBE) in small tutorial group settings, was also adopted. This approach was aimed at educating and graduating a broader cohort of students, while training future doctors to identify, analyze, and treat health problems in the rural South African context.