Improving outcomes for children with malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia in Mozambique: A cluster randomised controlled trial of the inSCALE technology innovation.

Background: The majority of post-neonatal deaths in children under 5 are due to malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia (MDP). The WHO recommends integrated community case management (iCCM) of these conditions using community-based health workers (CHW). However iCCM programmes have suffered from poor implementation and mixed outcomes.

Potential Roles of Mhealth for Community Health Workers: Formative Research With End Users in Uganda and Mozambique.

Background: Community health workers are reemerging as an essential component of health systems in low-income countries. However, there are concerns that unless they are adequately supported, their motivation and performance will be suboptimal. mHealth presents an opportunity to improve support for community health workers; however, most interventions to date have been designed through a top-down approach, rarely involve the end user, and have not focused on motivation.

Using theory and formative research to design interventions to improve community health worker motivation, retention and performance in Mozambique and Uganda.

Background: Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly being used in low-income countries to address human resources shortages, yet there remain few effective, evidence-based strategies for addressing the enduring programmatic constraints of worker motivation, retention and performance. This paper describes how two interventions were designed by the Innovations at Scale for Community Access and Lasting Effects (inSCALE) project to address these constraints in Uganda and Mozambique drawing on behavioural theory and formative research results.

Methods: A review of the work motivation and CHW motivation literature--incorporating influences on retention and performance--was conducted on articles sourced through electronic web searches.