Community Media Trust (CMT) has been one of the organisations leading the discussion on government policy around the capacitation and utilisation of Community Care Workers (CCWs) as part of a re-engineered and improved Primary Health Care system. CMT has also formed part of the CCW Steering Committee and civil society involvement in evolving policy development on the role and function, training and remuneration of Community Health Workers in South Africa.
In addition to this involvement, CMT is conducting a Randomised Control Trial to evaluate the impact of Community Health Workers on the uptake and delivery of Prevention of Mother to child Transmission (of HIV) services in the Motheo District, Free State. Working closely with the University of Cape Town (UCT), we hope to demonstrate that our model for the utilisation of CCWs for Health Education has a positive effect on both the uptake of health services and health outcomes South Africa. This study is exciting as it is the first attempt to conduct robust, statistically significant research on the impact of CCWs in this sector. This Research Project is in its first phase and our team of 17 CCWs have been deployed to randomly selected intervention sites. Data relating to uptake of health services and health outcomes will be analysed before and after the intervention.
These activities provide an exciting opportunity for CMT to feed directly into wider policy and system design discussions.