Giving Compass' Take:

• Anuja Jayaraman and Nikhat Shaikh offer an overview of community health workers in India and the details explaining recruitment, motivation, and training of these valuable individuals within the health care system. 

• How can local nonprofits, NGOs, and philanthropists help strengthen community health workers' networks and resources? 

• Read more about frontline community health workers in India.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 3 aims to increase access to universal health coverage by 2030. This is to be achieved through better recruitment, training, and retention of the healthcare workforce (among other things).

Most of the government health schemes in India rely on community health workers (CHWs) to implement their strategies at the ground level. In addition, many nonprofits implementing health interventions also depend heavily on these frontline workers to reach communities and health systems in order to improve the overall health outcomes in the country.

A few years ago, we at SNEHA realised that we know very little about these CHWs beyond the basic demographic information we had access to. To address this, we conceptualised and designed a qualitative study to understand what motivates these CHWs, what their challenges are, and how they are overcome.

  • Recruitment: Community health workers are recruited through a mix of both formal and informal processes. Referrals are the most common way of recruiting CHWs.
    • Current CHWs work closely with community members and are able to help in the recruitment process by referring good candidates.
    • Local nonprofit employees often refer people in their communities.
  • Training: Organisation support in terms of training, mentorship, recognition, and upward mobility play an important role in retaining CHWs. Their attachment is rooted in programmatic guidance and support received from the organisation.
  • Motivation
    • Community buy-in: When a CHW starts working in any new community they face resistance and often have to spend a lot of time building their credibility and getting buy-in.
    • New skills learned: The skills frontline workers acquire on the job build their self-worth and confidence.

Read the full article about community health workers by Anuja Jayaraman and Nikhat Shaikh at India Development Review.