How Do Community Health Workers Contribute to Better Nutrition? - Advocacy Tools

This set of advocacy resources is intended to help government ministry staff and other in-country stakeholders to advocate for increased involvement of community health workers (CHW) in promoting good nutrition. Based on an analysis of policies in 9 countries, the documents offer information on the current responsibilities of CHW in each country, and identify gaps in nutrition service delivery where advocacy for policy or programme change related to the role of CHWs may be required.   

As stated in the documents, “Community health workers (CHW) play a critical role in delivering evidence-based, cost-effective interventions that can improve nutrition outcomes. Information on the services that CHW provide is necessary to advocate for change in training, management, and supervision systems related to the delivery of nutrition services by CHWs but the diversity and magnitude of community health programmes in a given country can make it hard to find.” Advocacy tools have been developed for Afghanistan, Haiti, India, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, and Zambia.

The resources are intended for government ministry staff and other in-country stakeholders , who can use these materials to:

• Identify which nutrition-related services CHWs can provide, according to policies;
• Prioritise and/or reassign responsibilities to avoid overburdening CHWs;
• Build a stronger foundation of policies, tools, and systems for CHWs to conduct their work;   
• Plan additional support to CHWs;
• Design and conduct other in-depth assessments of community nutrition programmes;   
• Inform programme implementers to strengthen community health interventions.

The documents are offered as both PDF and PowerPoint files. The PowerPoint files can be used as the basis for presentations, while the accompanying PDF files can be printed and handed out as part of a presentation or meeting.

The resources are a collaboration between the Strengthening Partnerships, Results, and Innovations in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) and the Advancing Partners and Communities (APC) project, which focuses on advancing and supporting community health systems and programmes. The documents were developed using information collected by APC, with input from SPRING, through a desk review of existing policies and documents related to community health systems. Due to the diversity and magnitude of community health programmes in a given country, the collected information is based on country policies/strategies that comprise the key areas of a community health system and not the realities of programme implementation. Due to funding and timing, the focused is on national public sector programmes, and only when possible, captured community-based private sector health programmes operating at scale.