Community health worker (CHW)

Community health worker (CHW) is an umbrella term describing public health workers who play a crucial role in preventing, promoting, and improving public health. Community health workers serve members of the community by helping them to adopt healthy behaviors.  

According to community health strategies (CHS), the basic level of community health workers is community health promoters; They act as a bridge between healthcare providers and their communities, helping address healthcare disparities, increase access to care, and improve health outcomes, especially among underserved or marginalized populations.  

The second category is the community health assistants (Community Health Level 5).

At this level, a person is trained to provide Community Health Services where specific duties and responsibilities include: identifying common ailments and minor injuries at the community level; identifying and referring health cases to the appropriate health facilities; coordinating community health activities; collating health data from households for analysis; visiting homes to determine health situations and dialogue with household; sensitizing and disseminating health information to the community; identifying defaulters of health interventions and referring them to, health facilities; convening meetings and action. days in collaboration with Community Health Committees and other stakeholders; managing community health resource centers; and requisitioning refills for the community health workers' kits.  

The third category is Assistant Community Health Officer (Community Health Level 6).

An officer at this level provides Community Health Services where specific duties and responsibilities, include: coordinating community health activities; sensitizing community members on health issues; recommending appropriate action for identified defaulters of health interventions; planning and coordinating community heath meetings in liaison with other stakeholders in the health sector; identifying and taking action for common ailments and minor injuries; collecting data during community diagnosis; conducting community psychosocial counseling; and training other Community Health Workers and Community Health Committees on community health issues.

Kenya School for Integrated Medicine is key in training and equipping a new generation of community healthcare workers (CHAs and ACHO) with the right healthcare knowledge, skills, and attitude.

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