Community Health Worker Pay and Workload: The Case of Ethiopia's Women's Development Army, Poster 55

Community health worker (CHW) pay, workload, and effectiveness are key issues globally and in Ethiopia, an impoverished country whose leaders nevertheless maintain ambitious plans for improving primary health care. This... [ view full abstract ]

Community health worker (CHW) pay, workload, and effectiveness are key issues globally and in Ethiopia, an impoverished country whose leaders nevertheless maintain ambitious plans for improving primary health care. This poster presents survey data collected in 2015, quantifying the workloads of Ethiopia’s national, all-female cadre of unpaid CHWs (n=422), known as the Women’s Development Army. We also summarize qualitative data from these unpaid women about their workloads and effectiveness, which reveal a tension between desires to cooperate with government directions to improve health in their own communities, and desires to receive payment and other forms of assistance.