Tackling Community Health Worker Programme Barriers: Achieving equity and effectiveness amidst resource constraints

World Vision, Gavi, and the Global Fund would like to invite you to a WHA side event titled “Tackling Community Health Worker programme barriers: Achieving equity and effectiveness amidst resource constraints” on May 26^th at 10:00- 14:00 CEST.

In this event, we will explore the challenges in scaling up sufficient numbers of Community Health Workers (CHWs) to achieve full coverage of services, and highlight the importance of strong and enabling health systems to support CHW programs.

We will hear from the Africa CDC about the 2 million CHW initiative for sub-Saharan Africa, and the progress and challenges in terms of financial requirements to meet that goal. We will ask the question of what it would take to remunerate all CHWs and whether, in light of resource constraints, if there may still be role for volunteers. We will also hear about two frameworks currently in use by the Global Fund and World Vision International for assessing and tracking the necessary health systems pre-requisites, as a way of setting the scene for the discussions to follow. Panellists ranging from a Community Health Worker from Kenya to leaders from international governmental and non-governmental organisations will explore an array of health systems issues as they relate to CHW programs, to include the need for human resources to fill the CHW supervision gap, supply chains to address the common problem of CHW stock outs, work planning to address the overburdening of CHWs while still ensuring equitable and quality service delivery, the need for multi-sectoral efforts and integration and, underlying all of this, strong champions and the political will to invest as needed into the primary health care workforce.

Please register using the following links to attend in person here, and note that you can also attend virtually by signing up here.