Guidance for community health workers: strategic information and service monitoring
Introduction
This guidance outlines a set of standardized indicators collected by community health workers on their activities and on the communities they serve.
The guidance responds to the 2019 World Health Assembly resolution WHA72.3 which calls for:
a) alignment of data and digital efforts to optimize Community Health Worker (CHW) programmes, and
b) the generation of a stronger evidence base for the impact of CHWs.
The information collected supports the monitoring of community actions, in line with promoting human rights-based approaches to equity-focused data, in order to "Leave no one behind" (as per the UN SDGs). The guidance aims to reduce fragmentation and frontline reporting burdens by aligning partner and national reporting mechanisms and facilitating the harmonization and integration of CHW indicators into a broader country Health Information Systems (HIS).
Because CHW cadres across and even within countries are remarkably diverse in terms of their tasks, this guidance follows a modular approach: it is flexible enough to be adapted for different country contexts and varying maturity levels of different CHIS. These indicators are also aligned with existing monitoring frameworks to facilitate the harmonization and integration of Community Health Worker indicators into broader country Health Information Systems (HIS). The guidance consists of three separate documents: The main document, metadata by indicators, and selected highlights.
The guidance development followed a participatory and iterative approach, including background research, a global survey that targeted stakeholders from 15 organizations, country consultation workshops, synthesis, and validation across various organizations.
Authors
UNICEF, WHO, The GLOBAL FUND, UN WOMEN, UNAIDS, STOP TB, The Rockefeller Foundation, GAVI, HDC
About the guidance
UNICEF, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund); UN Women, UNAIDS, Stop TB Partnership, The Rockefeller Foundation, and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), have jointly released The Guidance for Community Health Workers: Strategic Information and Service Monitoring.
