Community Health Workers, or CHWs, play an important role on the C2C team.  Working closely with the clinic staff, they schedule follow up visits with patients, and travel throughout the community, educating and raising awareness.

Camp Coq is spread over a large area and the CHWs need to be able to reach all corners of the community.  Finding a patient’s home can be quite difficult, as there are no street names or house numbers, but we are committed to 100% follow up with all of our patients.  With this in mind, team members Julia Maxwell, Global Programs Manager, Dr. Jean-Eric Calvaire, Haiti Country Manager, and myself, recently worked with our CHW team to conduct a mapping activity of the community.

The CHWs led the process of neighborhood identification.  Their grassroots connection with the community is integral, not only to this exercise, but to the clinic’s operations as well.

During the activity, the team worked to create a map that would: divide up the neighborhoods to ensure complete coverage, flag vulnerable areas where families might need particular kinds of support, and map routes for accessing hard-to-reach areas (some require several hours walk, while others are accessible by motorbike).

Having a strong visual tool to aid them will allow the CHWs to ensure they are able to reach all of our patients in the Camp Coq Community.