Communities & Services

Community Health Workers & Community-Based Providers

Community health workers and other community-based providers connect formal health services with the places where people live. They can extend screening and follow-up beyond specialist facilities, help people understand unfamiliar technologies or health information, recognize practical barriers that are easy to miss from a clinic, and create continuity between households, communities and health services.

Their contribution is also part of the evidence. When community-based providers use new devices, support participants, mobilize communities or report difficulties in a workflow, their experience helps show whether an intervention can function outside a tightly controlled research environment. Across WEMA-linked programmes, this perspective has been especially important where care is intentionally moved closer to communities.

DREAM-GLOBAL

DREAM-GLOBAL placed community health workers within the hypertension-care pathway in participating First Nations communities in Canada and rural communities in Tanzania. Community health workers were trained to measure blood pressure, use Bluetooth-enabled equipment, enrol participants, support people using mobile phones and transmit readings into the study system.

This role connected household-level measurement and support with a wider clinical and research pathway. It also allowed the programme to learn from the point where technology met everyday life. Feedback from community health workers, participants and healthcare providers helped explain practical issues around devices, communication, local routines and the support people needed to remain engaged. Community health workers therefore contributed both to delivery and to understanding how the intervention operated across different settings.

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