The Importance of Community Health Workers in Health Care

Emma speaks to Dr Matt Harris and GP Dr Connie Junghans Minton about an initiative involving community health and wellbeing workers that has been adopted in Connie’s practice in London and is also being rolled out to practices in other parts of the country.

It is based on a long-running scheme from Brazil, where evidence shows it has made a significant difference in terms of public health measures and health outcomes. Community health and wellbeing workers have already had some impressive results in the short time they have been working in London.

Matt, who is now a clinical senior lecturer in public health medicine at Imperial College London saw the scheme in action first hand when he worked as a GP in Brazil and it was his idea to bring the model to this country.

In this interview, he explains how the scheme works and how it can help GPs. Meanwhile Connie, who is also senior clinical fellow in primary care at Imperial College, discusses how her practice introduced community health and wellbeing workers for some of their most deprived patients and results from the initial pilot.

This episode was presented by GPonline editor Emma Bower. It was produced by Czarina Deen

Useful links

Information on the community health and wellbeing worker programme is on the NAPC website here

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