IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v24y1987i6p515-528.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging the gap: The village health worker as the cornerstone of the primary health care model

Author

Listed:
  • Bender, Deborah E.
  • Pitkin, Kathryn

Abstract

The Alma-Ata Conference in 1978 reiterated the goal of 'Health for All by the Year 2000' and declared primary health care (PHC) the vehicle through which this lofty goal was to be achieved. National governments were recognized as responsible agents for developing and implementing PHC plans. The emphasis on community-oriented delivery of care places great importance on the village health worker (VHW), the individual who serves as the 'interface' between the formal health care system and the community. Despite the acknowledged importance of the VHW role, the question of whether the PHC model, with the VHW as the cornerstone can be effectively implemented without a "fundamental shift of wealth and power" (Sidel) continues to be asked. This paper examines the evolution and current status of the VHW role in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Colombia, three Latin American nations which have adopted the PHC model. The authors discuss the evolution of the PHC model in each country with particular reference to the occurence or non-occurence of fundamental changes in the society. The conclude that the primary determiner of successful implementation of PHC is a national commitment to PHC including recognition of the importance of community participation which is best achieved through reliance on the village health worker.

Suggested Citation

  • Bender, Deborah E. & Pitkin, Kathryn, 1987. "Bridging the gap: The village health worker as the cornerstone of the primary health care model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 515-528, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:24:y:1987:i:6:p:515-528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(87)90341-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. May, Marlynn L. & Contreras, Ricardo B., 2007. "Promotor(a)s, the organizations in which they work, and an emerging paradox: How organizational structure and scope impact promotor(a)s' work," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 153-166, July.
    2. Standing, H. & Chowdhury, A. Mushtaque R., 2008. "Producing effective knowledge agents in a pluralistic environment: What future for community health workers?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 2096-2107, May.
    3. Purity Mwendwa, 2018. "What encourages community health workers to use mobile technologies for health interventions? Emerging lessons from rural Rwanda," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 36(1), pages 111-129, January.
    4. Riviere-Cinnamond, Ana, 2005. "Animal Health Policy and Practice: Scaling-up Community-based Animal Health Systems, Lessons from Human Health," PPLPI Working Papers 23775, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:24:y:1987:i:6:p:515-528. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.