Center for Global Development’s “Global Health Policy Blog”: Time Has Value: The Hidden Time Costs of Community Health Worker Programs
Sebastian Bauhoff, research fellow at CGD, discusses the debate around the cost-effectiveness of recruiting community health workers (CHWs), writing, “Though the potential benefits of the approach are easily touted, the full costs remain murky and are often an afterthought. In particular, many CHWs are not compensated and the value of their time is not reflected in program costs. As a consequence, it is unclear whether CHWs are cost-effective, especially if deployed as an integral component of a health system. It’s high time for governments and donors to account for the invisible costs of CHW programs and to rethink their advocacy for this delivery platform…” (1/4).