A time-motion study of community health workers delivering community-based primary health care in Neno District, Malawi

INTRODUCTION: Community health workers (CHWs) are vital resources in delivering community-based primary health care, especially in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC). However, few studies have investigated detailed time and task assessments of CHW's work. We conducted a time-motion study to evaluate CHWs' time on health conditions and specific tasks in Neno District, Malawi. METHODS: We conducted a descriptive quantitative study utilizing a time observation tracker to capture time spent by CHWs on focused health conditions and tasks performed during household visits. We observed 64 CHWs between 29 June and 20 August 2020. We computed counts and median to describe CHW distribution, visit type, and time spent per health condition and task. We utilized Mood’s median test to compare the median time spent at a household during monthly visits with the program design standard time. We used pairwise median test to test differences in median time duration for health conditions and assigned tasks. RESULTS: We observed 660 CHW visits from 64 CHWs, with 95.2% (n = 628) of the visits as monthly household visits. The median time for a monthly household visit was 34 min, statistically less than the program design time of 60 min (p < 0.001). While the CHW program focused on eight disease areas, pretesting with the observation tool showed that CHWs were engaged in additional health areas like COVID-19. Of the 3043 health area touches by CHWs observed, COVID-19, tuberculosis, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) had the highest touches (19.3%, 17.6%, and 16.6%, respectively). The median time spent on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and NCDs was statistically higher than in other health areas (p < 0.05). Of 3813 tasks completed by CHWs, 1640 (43%) were on health education and promotion. A significant difference was observed in the median time spent on health education, promotion, and screening compared to other tasks (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that CHWs spend the most time on health education, promotion, and screening per programmatic objectives but, overall, less time than program design. CHWs deliver care for a broader range of health conditions than the programmatic design indicates. Future studies should examine associations between time spent and quality of care delivery. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12960-023-00839-z.