Community Health Worker Data Dialogues

How do we build health systems that truly listen and learn from their frontline? Dr. James O'Donovan and Dickson Mbewe sit down with Dr Madeleine Ballard, CEO & Co-founder of Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) and Tracey McNeill, Director of Primary Health Care at the Gates Foundation. Together they unpack why community health workers (CHWs) must be recognised not only as vital service providers, but also as data collectors and data users whose insights can transform national health planning.

Dr James O’Donovan and Dickson Mbewe explore the importance of co-design in global health with Professor Shobhana Nagraj (University of Cambridge) and Dr Karen Finnegan (Pivot Science), illustrating how engaging community health workers in the design of systems and tools creates better data quality and more resilient health systems.

Dr James O’Donovan and Dickson Mbewe trace the evolution of digitisation in community health work with Brian DeRenzi (Global Director of Research Strategy, Dimagi) and Kanishka Kantara (Chief Digital Health Officer, Living Goods). Together, they explore how data-enabled tools are reshaping CHWs’ relationships with both communities and governments. 

Dr James O’Donovan and Dickson Mbewe sit down with Mallika Raghavan (Deputy Chief Program Officer, Last Mile Health) and Hamid Abdullah (Implementation Lead, Khushi Baby), to explore why accurate, verified data are the bedrock of improved community-health outcomes, understand the practical barriers that lead to erosion of data quality in the field, and showcase how digital platforms, from mobile apps to biometric-enabled dashboards, can embed validation, reduce errors, and give CHWs real-time feedback to support their work. 

Dr James O’Donovan and Dickson Mbewe speak to Dr Matt Harris and Dr Nina Zhu from The Fleming Initiative, a joint initiative between Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare Trust, to explore how CHWs are detecting resistant infections early, educating communities on responsible antibiotic use, and feeding real-time data into national AMR dashboards.