Opportunities for community health workers to contribute to global efforts to end tuberculosis

ABSTRACT

Tuberculosis (TB) has emerged as the leading infectious cause of death globally. New paradigms are needed to reduce TB rates and mortality. Programs harnessing the potential of community health workers (CHWs) to enhance TB prevention and care have shown great promise. In this perspective article, we review the history of CHW-based efforts to prevent and treat TB, present evidence illustrating the effectiveness of CHWs across the entire cascade of TB care, and outline additional opportunities for CHWs to address challenges particular to the TB pandemic. Despite many promising studies, knowledge gaps persist and we suggest an agenda for future research on the role of CHWs in TB prevention and care.

KEYWORDS:

• Community health workers
• tuberculosis
• global health
• health care delivery
• HIV

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Anne Fan Liu for reading several drafts and offering thoughtful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Pranay Sinha http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4233-0871

Sheela V. Shenoi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7654-4344

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation [grant number 2015216]; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [grant number 5T32AI052074-13,K23AI089260]; The Patterson foundation [grant number 14-001927]; Irene Diamond Foundation [grant number 2006078].