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Conference Summary
Using Community Health Workers
to Prevent Infectious Diseases in Women1
Jamila Rashid,*
Olufemi O. Taiwo,† Beatriz Barraza-Roppe,‡ and Maria Lemus§
*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; †Somolu
and Bariga Local Government, Lagos, Nigeria; ‡Instituto de Promotoras,
San Diego, California, USA; and §Visión y Campromiso—The Community Health
Worker/Promotoras Network, El Cerrito, California, USA
Suggested
citation for this article
Community health workers have a long history of promoting comprehensive
health services, but using them to deliver infectious disease prevention
services in the United States has not been well studied recently. When
to use community health workers and the skills required vary depending
on the environment, culture, and context in which they are used. In some
environments, where healthcare services may be difficult to access, community
health workers may be involved in various stages of infectious disease
prevention: general health promotion, specific prophylaxis, early diagnosis
and treatment, limiting disability, and rehabilitation. In this context,
community health workers may be junior level health officers or volunteer
healthcare workers who receive appropriate training for functioning at
the required stage.
In other environments, community health workers function as promotoras
or "health promoters." In this context, promotoras typically
emerge from naturally occurring networks and focus on fostering behavior
change through role modeling, group activities, skill building, and goal
setting. Promotoras work in small groups and build strong collaborations
with schools, churches, clinics, and local health departments. Through
these activities, promotoras facilitate links between patients and the
healthcare system and minimize dropouts from required treatment regimens.
Promotoras and community healthcare workers are trusted by the communities
they serve and provide cost-effective services to persons whose infectious
diseases might otherwise go untreated.
1The following comments were made in presentations
by the above authors at the International Conference on Women and Infectious
Disease.
Suggested citation
for this article:
Rashid J, Taiwo OO,
Barraza-Roppe B, Lemus M. Using community health workers to prevent infectious
diseases in women [conference summary]. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the
Internet]. 2004 Nov [date cited]. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no11/04-0623_06.htm
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