Instructive roles and supportive relationships: client perspectives of their engagement with community health workers in a rural south African home visiting program.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Community health worker (CHW) programs have been positioned as a way to meet the needs of those who experience marginalization and inequitable access to health care, and current global health narratives also emphasize their adaptable nature to meet growing health burdens in low-income settings. However, as CHW programs adopt more technical roles, the value of CHWs in building relationships with clients tends to be overlooked. More importantly, these programs are often reframed and redeployed without attending to the interests and needs of program clients themselves. We set out to gather perspectives of program and CHW engagement from clients of a maternal and child health program in rural South Africa.

Methods

We conducted 26 interviews with pregnant or recently-d

SUBMITTER: Laurenzi CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7805205 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature