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dc.contributor.authorSchneider, Helen
dc.contributor.authorOkello, Dickson
dc.contributor.authorLehmann, Uta
dc.date.accessioned2017-06-05T09:23:12Z
dc.date.available2017-06-05T09:23:12Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.identifier.citationSchneider, H.et al. (2016). The global pendulum swing towards community health workers in low- and middle-income countries: a scoping review of trends, geographical distribution and programmatic orientations, 2005 to 2014. Human Resources for Health, 14(1): 65.en_US
dc.identifier.issn1478-4491
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/2924
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12960-016-0163-2
dc.description.abstractBACKGROUND: There has been a substantial increase in publications and interest in community health workers (CHWs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) over the last years. This paper examines the growth, geographical distribution and programmatic orientations of the indexed literature on CHWs in LMIC over a 10-year period. METHODS: A scoping review of publications on CHWs from 2005 to 2014 was conducted. Using an inclusive list of terms, we searched seven databases (including MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane) for all English-language publications on CHWs in LMIC. Two authors independently screened titles/abstracts, downloading full-text publications meeting inclusion criteria. These were coded in an Excel spreadsheet by year, type of publication (e.g. review, empirical), country, region, programmatic orientation (e.g. maternal-child health, HIV/AIDS, comprehensive) and CHW roles (e.g. prevention, treatment) and further analysed in Stata14. Drawing principally on the subset of review articles, specific roles within programme areas were identified and grouped. FINDINGS: Six hundred seventy-eight publications from 46 countries on CHWs were inventoried over the 10-year period. There was a sevenfold increase in annual number of publications from 23 in 2005 to 156 in 2014. Half the publications were reporting on initiatives in Africa, a third from Asia and 11 % from the Americas (mostly Brazil). The largest single focus and driver of the growth in publications was on CHW roles in meeting the Millennium Development Goals of maternal, child and neonatal survival (35 % of total), followed by HIV/AIDS (16 %), reproductive health (6 %), non-communicable diseases (4 %) and mental health (4 %). Only 17 % of the publications approached CHW roles in an integrated fashion. There were also distinct regional (and sometimes country) profiles, reflecting different histories and programme traditions. CONCLUSIONS: The growth in literature on CHWs provides empirical evidence of ever-increasing expectations for addressing health burdens through community-based action. This literature has a strong disease- or programme-specific orientation, raising important questions for the design and sustainable delivery of integrated national programmes.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherBioMed Centralen_US
dc.rightsCopyright The Author(s). 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
dc.subjectCommunity health workeren_US
dc.subjectCommunity health worker programmesen_US
dc.subjectIntegrated community case managementen_US
dc.subjectLay health workeren_US
dc.subjectMaternal-child healthen_US
dc.subjectVillage health workeren_US
dc.titleThe global pendulum swing towards community health workers in low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review of trends, geographical distribution and programmatic orientations, 2005 to 2014en_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterFALSE
dc.status.ispeerreviewedTRUE
dc.description.accreditationScopusen_US


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