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Table 8 Summary findings on community embeddedness

From: What do we know about community-based health worker programs? A systematic review of existing reviews on community health workers

Topic

Summary of findings

Of central importance

Community embeddedness is associated with CHW retention, motivation, performance, accountability, support, and ultimately the acceptability and uptake of CHWs’ health-related work [14, 15, 19, 23, 34, 35, 37, 40, 43,44,45,46,47,48, 107].

Mechanisms to foster community embeddedness

Community embeddedness can be fostered through [15, 19, 48]:

• Community members being involved in CHW selection and selecting a locally admired and trusted person

• Community having a clear understanding of and reasonable expectations for their CHW

• Community monitoring of CHWs

• Community ownership of the CHW program

• Community involvement in selection of activities and priority-setting of CHW work

• Health system backs up the CHWs with supervision, supplies and support, which in turn helps to maintain community trust in CHWs