Introduction: Digitally-empowered community health workers (CHWs) can effectively address preventable disease. To achieve impact, digital CHW programme design needs to consider selection criteria of CHWs including knowledge, skills and attributes like time-management, respect and diligence. In eight local areas in Kenya, Living Goods conducted a cohort study of 546 CHWs. This session will present and discuss the results and implications in CHW programme design to ensure robust human resources for community health. Methods: Data on the selection scores, pre and post-training assessment scores and subsequent on-the-job performance was collected. Kendall’s tau-b correlations between each selection score and performance outcome were calculated. Results: Though not statistically significant, there was a small negative correlation (tau-b = -0.04, p=0.25, p = 0.02) between total scores in the written and interview components. There was a range of post-training assessment scores and all indicators for on-the-job performance had positively skewed distributions. 94% (n=515) had registered at least one household or pregnancy in the first 4 to 6 months while 86% (n=469) had undertaken at least a child assessment. Although relatively low, all correlations between sales and health activity were positive and statistically significant at p 

In 2018, Medic Mobile launched the Community Health Toolkit as a global good with the goal of scaling software to advance Universal Health Coverage and Care. The Toolkit is intended to help community health care systems rapidly adopt ready-to-scale technologies and strategies, and provide a platform for new technologies, applications, and approaches. It’s a collection of open source technologies; open access design, technical, and implementer resources; and a community of practice for the precision global health community. With this approach, and sustainability in mind the constant challenge of scaling technology solutions, there is an emerging need to build the internal capacity of implementers and technical organizations. to design, build and deploy these tools in their organizations. Over the last year, we have been in the process of creating and sharing open source documentation for human-centered design capacity building and technical capacity building. Capacity building services might include basic on-boarding / orientation on CHT using a curriculum-based training approach with set content, an in-depth training- building further on the basic training and adapting the set training content for a specific context/project, co-design / co-development - delivering curriculum-based training and providing hand-holding to the partner on how to use the tools. We will talk about the format we have created to better transfer this knowledge to everyone regardless of the role they have in the organization. This curriculum, that emphasizes on deploying m-Health tools in the Community Health Toolkit, is structured for and can be used for training TOTs in various contexts especially for non designers. It has been tested with two partners in the Africa region so far.

Digital health (DH) technologies widely referred to as ehealth technologies, present new or improved ways of delivering healthcare, conducting health promotion activities and monitoring public health. Its fast-changing landscape requires the health workforce to renew their digital skills. Currently, the innovations are not matched to the requisite health worker usage skills. To this effect, ehealth strategies across the African region have highlighted the need to train DH workforce. In addition to skills and experience to apply eHealth in the management and delivery of care, the workforce needs skills to design, build, operate and support eHealth services. The diverse workforce herein referred to as Digital Health Worker (DHW), can be drawn from multiple professional backgrounds and diverse service providers to develop, operate and support the national eHealth environment. However, they should qualify with minimum set of competencies that enable them work with any set of DH technologies and anywhere in the region. Despite the revolutionizing power of ICT in health, health workers lag behind and have failed to cope with the fast-changing technology. This is reflected as a lack of competency, creating human resource gaps, e.g., good communicator, professional technologist, advocate, etc required of DHW in the African region. In addition, existing DH programmes in the region lack balanced course programmes to develop these core competencies. Also, the corresponding online training is modelled after the traditional face-to-face training, limiting the opportunity for the in-service health worker. Therefore, the session will discuss competencies required of a DHW across the African region and the need for a regional curriculum. The discussion will base on; i. assessment of various medical and DH frameworks including CanMEDs and European Digital Competence frameworks; ii. review of thirteen medical informatics curricula (USA, UK and African region); iii. Lesotho DH curriculum for health leaders/managers.