Supportive Supervision for Community Health Workers

Abstract Supportive supervision plays a key role in ensuring high quality service delivery in community health worker (CHW) programs. It emphasizes regular and consistent interactions between CHWs and supervisors, constructive feedback, and joint problem-solving. Moreover, it is associated with increased motivation, better work engagement, higher levels of job satisfaction, and improved performance among CHWs. In this chapter, we analyze supportive supervision through the lens of systems thinking. This chapter uses the WHO’s health system building blocks—health workforce; health information; service delivery; medical products, vaccines, and technologies; health system financing; and leadership and governance—as a framework to identify key factors that interact with supportive supervision. This chapter aims to demonstrate that (i) supportive supervision in primary healthcare programs exemplifies key aspects of systems thinking and (ii) the implementation of supportive supervision, in turn, benefits from a systems-thinking approach.