The co-chairs are Richard 15 Maude (MORU/APMEN) and Luigi Nuñez (PSI), with 19 members, and it was established in September 2021. The former co-chair was Debra Prosnitz (ICF) until March 2022.
The Community Health Committee is currently working on two action items: identify groups working on CHWs and SME, both in the malaria space and other/integrated programming, and contribute community-level SME information to a broader audience.
The future plans are to hold the next meeting in early 2024, increase involvement from other regions, finalize and disseminate the Asia-Pacific landscaping review and survey report, broadly disseminate the CHW SME landscaping survey and produce a report for wide dissemination, generate and share research summaries, and plan next steps toward guideline development
Vision Statement
The SME WG Community Health Committee aims to provide guidance on
- How the performance and impact of community health workers (CHWs) working on malaria, and integrated programs that include malaria, can be measured
- How malaria programs can engage CHWs in SME. To develop this guidance, the task force will engage with other groups working on SME with CHWs and groups working specifically on malaria to infuse a malaria perspective and promote sustainability of CHWs, respectively.
Interim Aims
- Identify scope of ongoing activities to find gaps and areas of complementarity on CHW SME
- Identify what other groups are working on CHWs and SME and whether includes malaria
- For malaria CHWs ensure broader perspective about sustainability of CHWs (via evidence for their impact)
- Determine how to demonstrate whether CHW programmes are effective and how to measure their performance and impact
- Determine how CHWs can be used for SME