Supervising Community health Workers in Community-Based Delivery of Primary Health/Family Planning Services: Experiences in Mexico, 1977-1982.

The supervision of community health workers (CHWs) in the Mexican Rural Health Program (1977-1982) illustrates a wide range of problems and strengths because it was developed within a program based on a strong political mandate to deliver services to an extremely large as well as culturally and geographically diverse population. This article presents an in-depth perspective on the issues inivolved in the supervision of CHWs with a focus on the myriad roles and responsibilities which are expected from supervisory personnel. Among the lessons relating to these issues and others that have been learned are the following: 1) selection and training of supervisors is critically important 2) supervisory visits are a key element in the success of CBD programs 3) the supervisors performance as a teacher/trainer is curcial in preparing and improving the CHWs performance and 4) home visits are often an important part of the supervisors activities and can be useful sometimes critical to program success. The infromation and observations which are offered come form program evaluation materials as well as the long-term 1st hand experience of the authors with the program discussed.