Making proCHW Investments Visible.
Making proCHW Investments Visible.
New Coalition research finds most funders do not systematically track or report proCHW investments, making it challenging to assess global funding flows.
Improved reporting can help optimize investments in proCHW programs and advance global health goals.
CHWS are the foundation of primary healthcare.
Community health workers (CHWs) bring health services to the doorstep—from vaccinations to maternal care to lifesaving treatment in the most remote areas.
Indisputable evidence confirms that CHWs save lives, improve health, and bring huge economic and equity benefits. Yet despite emerging consensus that CHWs should be paid, trained, supervised, and equipped as professionals, funding to make that happen is falling short.
Although global development financing prior to 2025 included unprecedented levels of investment in health, only a small percentage was directed toward CHWs. For example, the total development assistance targeting CHW projects from 2007 to 2017 was just 2.5% of the total development assistance for health—and even that figure may be overstated.
The challenge isn’t just too little funding—it’s also a lack of transparency. A new CHIC study, the first of its kind, maps funding flows for CHWs across eight major donors. The findings show how hard it is to track where money is actually going, with limited data available on investments specifically for professional CHWs.