Association between sociodemographic characteristics of female community health volunteers and their knowledge and performance on maternal and child health services in rural Nepal

Abstract

Background

Engaging community health volunteers and community health workers to provide maternal and child health (MCH) care services in resource-poor settings is one of the global and widely used concepts. Despite a great role of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) in MCH services in Nepal, few research studies have been performed in this area. Our research aimed to assess the knowledge and performance of FCHVs on MCH services associated with their sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to assess the knowledge and performance on selected MCH services of FCHVs using structured questionnaire in 16 village development committees of Dhanusha district, Southern Terai, Nepal, from the first of January to the end of February of 2014. A total of 138 FCHVs were selected by using multistage random sampling technique. Logistic regression was employed to examine the association between selected sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge and performance on MCH services of FCHVs after adjusting for significant variables associated with knowledge and performance and within-cluster effect.

Results

Our findings demonstrated that sociodemographic characteristics were associated independently with good knowledge of FCHVs on MCH services: education level secondary and above (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 5.2; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.2–12.2); residing in Mother and Infant Research Activities, nongovernmental organization working area (aOR 3.7; 95% CI 1.5–8.8); and middle caste (aOR 3.3; 95% CI 1.0–10.3). Similarly, satisfactory performance of FCHVs significantly associated with MCH services were education level secondary and above (aOR 8.9; 95% CI 3.2–24.3) and residing in Mother and Infant Research Activities working areas (aOR 9.0; 95% CI 3.5–22.6).

Conclusion

The study recommends considering education level while recruiting rural FCHVs and capacity enhancement through additional training and development programs in collaboration with developmental partner.

Keywords:

• FCHV
• knowledge
• performance
• sociodemographic characteristics
• Nepal

Supplementary materials

Figure S1 Survey questionnaire.

Abbreviations: VDC, Village Development Committee; MCH, maternal and child health; FCHV, female community health volunteer.

Table

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our research assistants and all FCHVs for their kind cooperation during this study. We are grateful to Deepak Adhikari, PhD (Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) for final English check and editing of our manuscript.

Author contributions

DA and JKS participated in the study design. DA and JKS performed statistical analysis and wrote manuscript with significant contribution from SA. SA and VJ contributed to the analysis, interpretation of the results, literature review, and revision of the manuscript. All the authors contributed in revision and agreed on the final manuscript.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.