A strong community health workforce is the most powerful tool to help communities prepare for, prevent, and respond to pandemics and epidemics. Community health workers conduct active disease surveillance and can raise the alarm at the beginning of an outbreak. As trusted members of their communities, they can educate their neighbors on preventative measures and keep routine health services going. And when health crises limit travel, they are often the only health workers within reach.

Here’s how we’ve partnered with governments to mobilize community health workers in response to pandemics, epidemics, and other health crises:

EBOLA

• During the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, we worked alongside the Government of Liberia to train more than 1,300 health workers and community members to educate communities, refer patients to care, and contain the spread of Ebola. Primary health services, which had all but shut down across Liberia, were never disrupted in the communities where we worked. The impact of the community health workforce during the Ebola epidemic catalyzed the launch of Liberia’s first national community health worker program in 2016.

COVID-19

• In 2020, we launched a comprehensive effort to support government partners to safely deploy community and frontline health workers to prevent, detect, and respond to COVID-19, while ensuring patients have uninterrupted access to primary healthcare.
• We supported the delivery of 6.2 million pieces of personal protective equipment to keep health workers safe as they delivered care.
• With partners, we launched the COVID-19 Digital Classroom, which provides medically-reviewed multimedia training and education content for frontline health workers and local communities worldwide.
• More than 14,000 health professionals download courses available through our COVID-19 apps in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

PREVENTING AND PREPARING FOR FUTURE OUTBREAKS

• We advocate globally for investing in community and frontline health workers as part of resilient primary health systems that can withstand the shocks of crisis. We have advised global institutions, such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and Africa CDC, on the role of community health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and advocated alongside partners like the Community Health Impact Coalition to ensure community health workers are supported with personal protective equipment, training, and vaccinations.