Archives: DRC Resources

Measuring Return on Investment of Outreach by Community Health Workers

Community health workers (CHWs) are effective in improving access to health care, promoting client knowledge and behaviour change, and contributing to improved health status of individuals. However, few outreach programs have evaluated the financial impact of CHWs on health care systems and policies. A longitudinal repeated measures design was used to assess the return on […]

Promotor(a)s, the organizations in which they work, and an emerging paradox: How organizational structure and scope impact promotor(a)s’ work

Abstract: Objective: To analyze how organizational structures and scope (geographic and programmatic) generate dissonance between the organization and its workers, creating a paradox with policy implications for access to health care in hard-to-reach populations. The workers are lay community health workers called promotor(a)s. The organizations are community based organizations in which the promotor(a)s work, either […]

A Global Review of Training of Community Health Workers

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are often the most important deliverers of health care services. This review brings together relevant information on CHWs and their training. These materials concern themselves with training techniques as they have been developed in various programs in various countries around the world. Because of the relative newness of the field the […]

The Seattle-King County Healthy Homes Project: A Randomized, Controlled Trial of a Community Health Worker Intervention to Decrease Exposure to Indoor Asthma Triggers

Objectives. We assessed the effectiveness of a community health worker intervention focused on reducing exposure to indoor asthma triggers. Methods. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 1-year follow-up among 274 low-income households containing a child aged 4–12 years who had asthma. Community health workers provided in-home environmental assessments, education, support for behavior change, and […]

Toward A Scalable, Patient-Centered Community Health Worker Model: Adapting the IMPaCT Intervention for Use in the Outpatient Setting.

Community health worker (CHW) programs are an increasingly popular strategy for patient-centered care. Many health care organizations are building CHW programs through trial and error, rather than implementing or adapting evidence-based interventions. This study used a qualitative design-mapping process to adapt an evidence-based CHW intervention, originally developed and tested in the hospital setting, for use […]

Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology to account for value for money of public health interventions: a systematic review

Background: Increased scarcity of public resources has led to a concomitant drive to account for value-for-money of interventions. Traditionally, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit analyses have been used to assess value-for-money of public health interventions. The social return on investment (SROI) methodology has capacity to measure broader socio-economic outcomes, analysing and computing views of multiple stakeholders […]