Community Health Impact Coalition
About Company
Indisputable evidence confirms that CHWs improve health outcomes. And CHWs are health workers. It’s in the name.
But good health only happens if there are good working conditions. For maximum lives saved, CHWs must be salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied. In most places, they’re not.
From Bangladesh to Uganda, the global community faces a moral dilemma and moral imperative. Will we commit to decent work in community health? Or will we continue to build health systems on the backs of an unpaid, mostly female workforce?
OUR MUTUAL MISSION
Community Health Impact Coalition is making professional community health workers (proCHWs) the norm worldwide by changing guidelines, funding, and policy.
COLLECTIVE ACTION THROUGH RADICAL COLLABORATION.
As a nonprofit field catalyst, the Coalition is achieving systems change. Not scaling up a particular organization.
CHIC flies in the face of the traditional aid model. Rather than protecting their intellectual property, members and allies are unpacking it and making it public.
This radical collaboration is how we wield influence on a scale sufficient to change global norms. It’s pragmatic solidarity: a shared vision of health for all, without caring who gets the credit.
FOUNDING STORY
From indignation to common cause.
Community Health Impact Coalition started as a loose collaboration of six innovative implementers: Partners in Health, Living Goods, Last Mile Health, Muso, Possible, and Integrate Health.
These organizations demonstrated that salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied CHWs dramatically reduced child mortality. In an astonishingly short timeframe. So the hunch was that radical collaboration could spread good design—driving results faster.
After two years of informal collaboration, we made CHIC official in 2019.
Since then, CHIC has crystallized into an audacious, 40-country movement. Today, the Coalition comprises thousands of CHWs and dozens of global health organizations in low- and middle-income countries. All members endorse proCHW best practices. Plus, invest serious sweat equity in driving our joint work. Allies support proCHW best practices, fund or work with community health workers, and contribute annually to at least one Coalition project.
WHAT WE DO.
Last Mile Health
TECHNICALLY RIGHT & MORALLY SOUND
Community Health Impact Coalition is making professional community health workers (proCHWs) the norm worldwide. We create international guidelines. We increase global funding. And we win national policy.
Our mission is both technically right and morally sound. We’re in ferocious pursuit of getting quality embedded and scaled in existing public sector health delivery.
OUR TACTICS
A POWERFUL, SYMBIOTIC MACHINE FOR POLICY CHANGE.
We use the three interconnected tactics of Research, Advocate, and Activate. We drive high-impact community health system design with those responsible for CHW policymaking, financing, and implementation.
RESEARCH
We equip international norm setters with evidence to create proCHW guidelines.
Publish joint studies
Disseminate Research Round-Up
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ADVOCATE
We influence global financing institutions to increase proCHW funding.
Launch best practice campaigns
Track & affect investments in proCHWs
Drive uptake of proCHW design tools
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ACTIVATE
We mobilize in-country networks to win national proCHW policy.
Train local CHW advocates
Connect CHW speakers
Host policy dashboard
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CHAMPIONS OF THE HEALTH SYSTEM
Community health workers have been a global cornerstone of primary healthcare for a century. 70% are women. Yet professional CHWs remain the exception, not the norm.
CHWs are essential to realizing a first-class health system worldwide. And central to pandemic preparedness, prevention, and response. ProCHWs are the most powerful force for achieving health for all. The proCHW model is remarkably simple, but the impact is immense. Now, governments have an opportunity to institutionalize this critical cadre of the health workforce.
GET THE FACTS
Partners in Health
PROFESSIONAL, DEFINED
EIGHT PROCHW BEST PRACTICES.
These best practices drive results but are currently rare. So we’ll crusade until they’re not.
1
ACCREDITED
Assess the health knowledge and competencies of CHWs to ensure minimum standards are met before carrying out work.
2
ACCESSIBLE
Avoid point-of-care user fees when possible to improve accessibility, timeliness, and equity of care.
3
PROACTIVE
Conduct disease surveillance by going door-to-door to find sick patients and teach them how to identify danger signs, then quickly contact a CHW.
4
CONTINUOUSLY TRAINED
Make continuing medical education available to and required of CHWs through modular delivery or another type of in-service learning.
5
SUPPORTED BY A DEDICATED SUPERVISOR
Provide CHWs with a dedicated supervisor to evaluate the patient experience and give 1:1 coaching on a frequent, regular basis.
6
PAID
Compensate CHWs financially at a rate that’s competitive relative to the respective market.
7
INTEGRATED INTO A ROBUST HEALTH SYSTEM
Invest in increasing the capacity, accessibility, and quality of the primary healthcare facilities, providers, and pharmacies to which CHWs link.
8
PART OF DATA FEEDBACK LOOPS
Collect data via CHWs, report it to public sector monitoring and evaluation systems, and train CHWs to use it to improve programs and performance.
Or in summary, professional means:
SALARIED, SKILLED, SUPERVISED, AND SUPPLIED.
THEORY OF CHANGE
Identifying the playbook, calling it out, and doing it in.
We’re committed to learning more about what drives impact and quality in CHW-delivered care. A paradigm shift will be required to make all CHWs professional. Then accelerate progress toward achieving global health goals and reaching health for all.
While we regret what we’re doing is innovative, we look forward to the day it becomes the norm.
SEE OUR BLUEPRINT
Dimagi
WHY SYSTEMS CHANGE?
CHWS ARE PEOPLE, NOT INFRASTRUCTURE.
Solving intractable global health problems will require changing complex systems. And doing so on a scale commensurate with the size of the issues. In other words, collective action is needed.
The entities driving this collective action are called multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) or field catalysts. These organizations align, coordinate, and influence stakeholders in an ecosystem to achieve systems change.
When creating the Community Health Impact Coalition, we relied on reports examining why some field catalysts succeed and others don’t. Then took inspiration from the characteristics of the high-performing MSIs.
We determined that sustained cooperation and collaboration are the essences of how we win. Together our voices are stronger; our resources go further. And we can do more for patients.
