Community Health Data Harmonization.
How harmonizing community health worker (CHW) data can drive quality improvement and cross-site learning.
EXCLUDED FROM RESEARCH
Our findings confirmed that CHWs were rarely included meaningfully in community health research. CHWs were only involved in study design 7% of the time and dissemination 2% of the time. And while CHWs played a role in study implementation 45% of the time, CHW researchers were only named as co-authors in 15%, and acknowledged at all in 32%, of studies!
This under-appreciation reflects systemic power imbalances within global health research, which often fails to adequately recognise or involve non-academic actors. One cause may be stringent guidelines concerning authorship attribution, which can inadvertently exclude CHWs by prioritising scholarly contributions over technical tasks. Barriers to inclusion across the research process, like language differences and a lack of training in research methods also prevent meaningful participation in data analysis and manuscript writing.