2017 ICT4D Conference

Community Health Nurses (CHNs) are paid frontline health workers in Ghana who provide community-based preventive and curative health care via “doorstep services” while residing in the community. They are faced with factors such as professional isolation and lack of support, which contribute to their lack of motivation—a critical potential challenge for CHNs. The Care Community Hub (CCH) pilot aims to provide the government of Ghana with an innovative solution to address barriers in health worker motivation through its mobile app “CHN on the Go” with modules designed to facilitate health worker learning, supervision and performance monitoring, communication and work activity planning, as well as to support health worker wellness. Implemented in five districts in the Greater Accra and Volta regions of Ghana, the objective is to improve the motivation and job satisfaction among CHNs and therefore contribute to improved quality of maternal newborn and child health care in the long term.

We present findings from a mixed method evaluation that analyzes survey data on CHN satisfaction and health knowledge, and in-depth interviews at baseline and endline. Qualitative data collection from CHNs, District Directors, and stakeholders including Ghana Health Service at multiple time points provide understanding of the implementation process along the pathways in the theory of change.

Results from the baseline provided information on the motivation, health knowledge, and needs of CHNs, which fed into the design of the project. Endline data provided critical information on the extent to which CHNs’ lives have changed and the associated reasons.

This study highlights a research, monitoring and evaluation approach involving on-going process documentation through the project lifetime, which can provide critical information to improve upon project design as well as understand the processes through which change in outcomes occur through the life of the project.