women

For our World Health Worker Week blog series, we are featuring a number of posts that focus on different cadres of health workers, within health workforce teams. This piece is from Living Goods and focuses on community health workers.

As we celebrate International Women's Day, this op-ed explores the movements that have been made to empower women and girls, and asks what this means in practice, particularly for the health workforce.

Gender sensitivity is crucial to being an effective frontline health worker, that's why the USAID HRH2030 program has developed a definition of gender competence and created a competency framework for family planning service providers

Lisa Bos of World Vision writes of her recent trip with US Congressional staff to Mozambique to see both the impact of US investments and the challenges the country faces in providing high-quality health services.

Tanzania continues to face a severe shortage of frontline health workers like doctors, nurse midwives and assistant medical officers. Touch’s Treat & Train program tackles this gap in Tanzania’s health system.

AIHA recently asked some of the frontline health workers trained through their projects to tell us about their work. In honor of World Health Worker Week 2018, we’re pleased to shine a spotlight on these women and the critical health services they provide to their communities.

Masuda, Shankori and Shilpi are women who are changing their world. They are entrepreneurial midwives that I met in Sunamganj, Bangladesh. They are improving health access in one of the most remote districts but where maternal and under-5 mortality rates have fallen dramatically in only a few years. These powerful women are also generating more income for their families and changing social norms.

If investment in health employment was truly proportionate to its impact, and wasn’t bound by the gender of its workers, it would be transformative.

NTDs affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. These disabling and debilitating diseases thrive in the world’s poorest communities, especially those without access to improved sanitation and hygiene, areas which often have limited access to trained and supported health workers.

The role women play in the health workforce globally – and here at home – cannot be overstated.