Community health workers: Frontline agents of change in underserved communities

Prevention is better than cure, and in marginalised communities it is Community Health Workers (CHWs) that can play a vital role in reducing the prevalence of preventable diseases.

In rural area where there is little to no basic primary health care, the distance to medical treatment, and the cost of transport and subsequent service provision, further exacerbate inaccessibility for the majority of community members who live in poverty. In these circumstances, trained volunteer CHWs who are embedded in the community, become frontline agents of change that promote good health and wellbeing.

So Reason Chidi Foundation Health project in Nigeria ensures that our program-supported schools and their surrounding communities are healthy, informed and able to take a proactive role in supporting everyone’s health and education. The improved health of community members is achieved largely through support of, well-resourced health care services by quality partner medical facilities. The Government provides personnel and supplies including medicines and consumables; the Clinics facilitate quality curative and preventive health services; and Reason Chidi Foundation with the support of donors provides medicines and other supplementary supplies, and also provides some infrastructure.