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The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review
Community health volunteers are considered a vital part of the community health structure in Africa. Despite this vital role in African health systems, very little is known about the community health volunteers’ day-to-day lived experiences providing services in communities and supporting other heal...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36314363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2022.2138117 |
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author | Ndu, Mary Andoniou, Ellena McNally, Sorcha Olea Popelka, Francisco Tippett, Marisa Nouvet, Elysée |
author_facet | Ndu, Mary Andoniou, Ellena McNally, Sorcha Olea Popelka, Francisco Tippett, Marisa Nouvet, Elysée |
author_sort | Ndu, Mary |
collection | PubMed |
description | Community health volunteers are considered a vital part of the community health structure in Africa. Despite this vital role in African health systems, very little is known about the community health volunteers’ day-to-day lived experiences providing services in communities and supporting other health workers. This scoping review aims to advance understanding of the day-to-day experiences of community health volunteers in Africa. In doing so, this review draws attention to these under-considered actors in African health systems and identifies critical factors and conditions that represent challenges to community health volunteers’ work in this context. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a synthesis of key challenges and considerations that can inform efforts to reduce attrition and improve the sustainability of community health volunteers in Africa. This scoping review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews checklist to achieve the objectives. A comprehensive search of six databases returned 2140 sources. After screening, 31 peer-reviewed studies were selected for final review. Analytical themes were generated based on the reviewers’ extraction of article data into descriptive themes using an inductive approach. In reviewing community health volunteers’ accounts of providing health services, five key challenges become apparent. These are: (1) challenges balancing work responsibilities with family obligations; (2) resource limitations; (3) exposure to stigma and harassment; (4) gendered benefits and risks; and (5) health-system level challenges. This scoping review highlights the extent of challenges community health volunteers must navigate to provide services in communities. Sustained commitment at the national and international level to understand the lived experiences of community health volunteers and mitigate common stressors these health actors face could improve their performance and inform future programs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9629118 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Taylor & Francis |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96291182022-11-03 The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review Ndu, Mary Andoniou, Ellena McNally, Sorcha Olea Popelka, Francisco Tippett, Marisa Nouvet, Elysée Glob Health Action Review Article Community health volunteers are considered a vital part of the community health structure in Africa. Despite this vital role in African health systems, very little is known about the community health volunteers’ day-to-day lived experiences providing services in communities and supporting other health workers. This scoping review aims to advance understanding of the day-to-day experiences of community health volunteers in Africa. In doing so, this review draws attention to these under-considered actors in African health systems and identifies critical factors and conditions that represent challenges to community health volunteers’ work in this context. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a synthesis of key challenges and considerations that can inform efforts to reduce attrition and improve the sustainability of community health volunteers in Africa. This scoping review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews checklist to achieve the objectives. A comprehensive search of six databases returned 2140 sources. After screening, 31 peer-reviewed studies were selected for final review. Analytical themes were generated based on the reviewers’ extraction of article data into descriptive themes using an inductive approach. In reviewing community health volunteers’ accounts of providing health services, five key challenges become apparent. These are: (1) challenges balancing work responsibilities with family obligations; (2) resource limitations; (3) exposure to stigma and harassment; (4) gendered benefits and risks; and (5) health-system level challenges. This scoping review highlights the extent of challenges community health volunteers must navigate to provide services in communities. Sustained commitment at the national and international level to understand the lived experiences of community health volunteers and mitigate common stressors these health actors face could improve their performance and inform future programs. Taylor & Francis 2022-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9629118/ /pubmed/36314363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2022.2138117 Text en © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Review Article Ndu, Mary Andoniou, Ellena McNally, Sorcha Olea Popelka, Francisco Tippett, Marisa Nouvet, Elysée The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title | The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title_full | The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title_fullStr | The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title_full_unstemmed | The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title_short | The experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in Africa: a scoping review |
title_sort | experiences and challenges of community health volunteers as agents for behaviour change programming in africa: a scoping review |
topic | Review Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36314363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2022.2138117 |
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