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The effect of payment and incentives on motivation and focus of community health workers: five case studies from low- and middle-income countries

Overview of attention for article published in Human Resources for Health, July 2015
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (77th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (66th percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 policy source
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6 X users

Citations

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110 Dimensions

Readers on

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454 Mendeley
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Title
The effect of payment and incentives on motivation and focus of community health workers: five case studies from low- and middle-income countries
Published in
Human Resources for Health, July 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12960-015-0051-1
Pubmed ID
Authors

Debra Singh, Joel Negin, Michael Otim, Christopher Garimoi Orach, Robert Cumming

Abstract

Community health workers (CHWs) have been proposed as a means for bridging gaps in healthcare delivery in rural communities. Recent CHW programmes have been shown to improve child and neonatal health outcomes, and it is increasingly being suggested that paid CHWs become an integral part of health systems. Remuneration of CHWs can potentially effect their motivation and focus. Broadly, programmes follow a social, monetary or mixed market approach to remuneration. Conscious understanding of the differences, and of what each has to offer, is important in selecting the most appropriate approach according to the context. The objective of this review is to identify and examine different remuneration models of CHWs that have been utilized in large-scale sustained programmes to gain insight into the effect that remuneration has on the motivation and focus of CHWs. A MEDLINE search using Ovid SP was undertaken and data collected from secondary sources about CHW programmes in Iran, Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Five main approaches were identified: part-time volunteer CHWs without regular financial incentives, volunteers that sell health-related merchandise, volunteers with financial incentives, paid full-time CHWs and a mixed model of paid and volunteer CHWs. Both volunteer and remunerated CHWs are potentially effective and can bring something to the health arena that the other may not. For example, well-trained, supervised volunteers and full-time CHWs who receive regular payment, or a combination of both, are more likely to engage the community in grass-roots health-related empowerment. Programmes that utilize minimal economic incentives to part-time CHWs tend to limit their focus, with financially incentivized activities becoming central. They can, however, improve outcomes in well-circumscribed areas. In order to maintain benefits from different approaches, there is a need to distinguish between CHWs that are trained and remunerated to be a part of an existing health system and those who, with little training, take on roles and are motivated by a range of contextual factors. Governments and planners can benefit from understanding the programme that can best be supported in their communities, thereby maximizing motivation and effectiveness.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 6 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 454 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Sierra Leone 1 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Congo, The Democratic Republic of the 1 <1%
South Africa 1 <1%
Unknown 450 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 98 22%
Researcher 72 16%
Student > Ph. D. Student 48 11%
Student > Bachelor 25 6%
Other 23 5%
Other 83 18%
Unknown 105 23%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 103 23%
Nursing and Health Professions 62 14%
Social Sciences 62 14%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 22 5%
Business, Management and Accounting 14 3%
Other 68 15%
Unknown 123 27%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 November 2021.
All research outputs
#5,411,095
of 25,394,764 outputs
Outputs from Human Resources for Health
#621
of 1,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#62,733
of 276,513 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Resources for Health
#7
of 21 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,394,764 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 78th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,261 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 276,513 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 21 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its contemporaries.