Feasibility and Effectiveness of Taskshifting for NCD Prevention Interventions to the Community Health Workers

Abstract

The community health workers are looked on as one of the most important health workforce in providing newline health services at the ground level. Since several decades, they were most widely used to provide MCH newline and other essential health care services. The emergence of global NCD pandemic has opened up new newline avenues for the community level management of NCDs. The community health workers were considered newline to be the key in this context, which was even voiced by several studies. In the current study, the newline researcher tried to answer from the perspective of multiple stakeholders the question of how feasible and newline how effective it would be to task shift NCD prevention interventions to community health workers. newline With 5 chapters, and several sub-sections within each chapter, the researcher discussed in length and newline breadth about the idea under the study. The introduction chapter provides an initial background for the newline study providing a brief description of the Non-communicable diseases and community health workers. It newline also gives an account of the objectives of the study, which guided the commencement of research in the newline later stages. The second chapter on the literature review provides a detailed literary background to the newline study. Taking the inputs from over 100 literary works, the researcher built a detailed literature newline background guiding the development of the study. The literature review aided in understanding the newline research gaps in the area, and develop the rationale and problem statement for the study which were newline discussed in the same chapter. newline In the third chapter, the researcher described in detail the methodology guiding the study. The researcher newline discusses several aspects building the study, right from the paradigm of the study to the analysis plan for newline the data analysis. The researcher in detail, discussed the research design opted, sampling criteria, data newline collection procedure and data analysis with justification in order to maintain the credibility of the study. newline The fourth chapter is primarily dedicated to the results obtained from the study and their discussion. The newline chapter clubs both the results and discussion together and the results obtained are discussed newline simultaneously for better understanding of the phenomenon. Overall, the researcher in detail, discussed 4 newline broad thematic categories with 17 themes within. Additionally, the network of themes was developed newline connecting the themes emerged, reflecting the relationship between them. The results obtained from the newline study, guided the researcher in developing a framework for taskshifting to community health workers, newline which was again discussed in the same chapter. The chapter on results and discussion was followed on by newline the recommendations from the researcher. From the understanding obtained from the study, the researcher newline proposed recommendations at two levels. One, the recommendations which are generic and are for the newline ASHA programme as a whole. Second, the recommendations that are specific to task shifting NCD interventions to ASHAs. Overall, in the fifth chapter the researcher recommends the ideas which are newline essential to consider, to make task shifting NCD interventions to ASHAs feasible and effective. newline In whole, in the detailed dissertation spread over 5 chapters, the researcher discussed about his study in newline length and breadth, building up the arguments from his results and substantiating them with the earlier newline studies. Overall, within these five chapters the researcher was able to qualitatively answer his objectives newline of how the stakeholders viewed the taskshifting of NCD interventions to ASHAs and what is their newline perception on feasibility and effectiveness of such task shifting. newline