TY - JOUR T1 - Health for the People: Past, Current, and Future Contributions of National Community Health Worker Programs to Achieving Global Health Goals JF - Global Health: Science and Practice JO - GLOB HEALTH SCI PRACT DO - 10.9745/GHSP-D-20-00459 AU - Henry B. Perry AU - Stephen Hodgins Y1 - 2021/02/10 UR - http://www.ghspjournal.org/content/early/2021/02/04/GHSP-D-20-00459.abstract N2 - Key MessagesAfter almost a century of experience, innovation, adaptation, and evidence, national community health worker (CHW) programs are now recognized as one of the most valuable assets for reaching global health goals, including achieving universal health coverage and ending preventable child and maternal deaths by 2030.In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly called urgently to accelerate progress in achieving these global health goals recognizing that, at the current pace, these goals will not be achieved for up to one-third of the world’s population.There is rapidly growing interest not only in CHWs but in community health more broadly, in engagement with communities for improving their own health, and in community-based surveillance for infectious disease outbreaks, especially now that the world is struggling to combat COVID-19 and is likely to face similar pandemics in the future.Training more professionalized CHWs with better and longer training, better supervision, improved logistical support, and well-defined career paths, and linking them to lower-level volunteer workers, each serving a small number of households, will help strengthen program effectiveness and improve CHW morale and long-term retention.The year targeted for achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—2030—is now less than a decade away. The health-related SDG3 includes both universal health coverage (UHC) and ending preventable child and maternal deaths. But, at the current pace, the UN predicts that UHC will not be achieved for up to one-third of the world’s population.1 In 2019, the UN General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution stating that “measurable acceleration is urgently needed” to reach the health-related targets of the SDGs by 2030.1 The United Nations also estimates that half the world’s population (3.8 billion people) lacks access to essential health services.1 The UN High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth estimates a shortfall of 18 … ER -