Improving the Quality of Community-Based Care

Improving the Quality of Community-Based Care

Community health volunteers (CHVs) provide primary health care services to remote populations. Services include integrated community case management (iCCM) of childhood illnesses, such as diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia; and family planning (FP) counseling and provision of contraceptives. However, the absence of effective quality assurance and ongoing capacity-building to improve CHV performance is demotivating for CHVs and potentially harmful for women and children receiving poor quality services. To address these quality issues, the USAID Mikolo Project implemented a series of approaches to assure, improve, and sustain the quality of community-based health services delivered by CHVs.

The proportion of CHVs who achieved the minimum quality score for FP counseling increased from 68% in 2015 to 72% in 2017. The proportion of CHVs who achieved the minimum quality score for iCCM increased from 68% in 2015 to 71% in 2017. In addition, the number of CHVs who were supervised per quarter at service-delivery sites increased from 1,613 (36%) in 2014 to 6,183 (93%) in 2017.