Family health sheets: a vital instrument for village health workers providing comprehensive healthcare.

Introduction: Community Health Worker (CHW) programs have long been used to provide acute care for children and women in healthcare shortage areas, but their provision of comprehensive longitudinal care for chronic problems is rare. The Village Health Worker (VHW) program, initiated in 2007, is an example of a long standing "horizontal" CHW program in rural Southwestern Uganda that has delivered village-level care for chronic disease based on a biannual village health census that identifies individual and family health risks. To facilitate continuity of care for problems identified, health census data were electronically transformed into family-specific Family Health Sheets (FHS) in 2016 which summarize the pertinent demographic and health data for each family, as well as health topics the family would like to learn more about.

Community Perceptions of Village Health Workers in Kisoro, Uganda.

Background: Village health workers (VHWs) can serve as a valuable resource to address public health needs in resource-limited settings such as Uganda. However, the successful implementation of VHW programs can be limited by poor acceptability among community members. Kisoro District Hospital (KDH) in Kisoro District, Uganda operates a VHW program and, at the time of the study, was expanding its services to 11 additional villages.

Managing hypertension in rural Uganda: Realities and strategies 10 years of experience at a district hospital chronic disease clinic.

The literature on the global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) contrasts a spiraling epidemic centered in low-income countries with low levels of awareness, risk factor control, infrastructure, personnel and funding. There are few data-based reports of broad and interconnected strategies to address these challenges where they hit hardest. Kisoro district in Southwest Uganda is rural, remote, over-populated and poor, the majority of its population working as subsistence farmers.

An educational intervention in rural Uganda: Risk-targeted home talks by village health workers.

Objective: Evaluate the effectiveness of home talks (HTs), a novel model of health education delivered by village health workers (VHWs) with primary-level education to rural African mothers. Talk recipients were assessed by health census to be at risk for ill-health in one of 5 ways: malnutrition, diarrhea, respiratory disease, HIV, and poverty due to family size.

Methods: Each participant received a pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test on their assigned HT topic and a pre-test and delayed post-test on a randomly assigned control topic.

A Performance-Based Incentives System for Village Health Workers in Kisoro, Uganda.

Background: Village health worker (VHW) programs in Uganda have achieved limited success, due in part to a reliance on volunteerism and a lack of standardized incentive mechanisms. However, how to best incentivize VHWs remains unclear. Doctors for Global Health developed a performance-based incentives (PBI) system to pay its VHWs in Kisoro, Uganda, based on performance of tasks or achievement of targets.