Innovation in supervision and support of community health workers for better newborn survival in southern Tanzania

Abstract

Background: Home visits by community health workers may help to improve newborn survival, but sustained high-quality supervision of community volunteers is challenging.

Objectives: To compare facility-led and community-linked supervision approaches of 824 community health volunteers working to improve newborn care in Southern Tanzania.

Methods: Using a before-after design, we compared 6 months of supervision reports from each approach.

Results: During the community-linked approach over 50 times more supervision contacts were recorded than during the facility-only supervision approach (1.04 contacts per volunteer per month vs 0.02), and the volunteer-supervisor ratio reduced from 7.8 to 1.6.

Conclusion: Involving community leaders has the potential to improve supervision of community health volunteers. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01022788; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01022788?term=INSIST&rank=1.

Keywords: Community health workers; Newborn health; Supervision; Tanzania.