Care Group Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Report and Appendices

A technical advisory group (TAG) meeting on Care Groups was conducted on 12/8/2010 by the CORE Group and MCHIP. 

The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) meeting brought together practitioners of the Care Group (CG) model from a variety of organizations in order to consider what is currently known about the effectiveness of the model and implications for scaling up.  Critical questions for the group to consider included whether Care Groups should be scaled up, and if so, how, when, and where does it fit into the types of systems governments are looking at for community health workers around the world.  

The meeting started with a review of the Care Group definition and minimum criteria followed by a presentation on the comparison of experiences and evaluations across Care Groups.  Care Groups are implemented by over 14 NGOs in 16 countries.  Final evaluation data of Care Group projects estimate on average a 30% reduction in under-five mortality (using the Bellagio Lives Saved Calculator) for a population of 92,000 beneficiaries at a cost of $5.75 per beneficiary, demonstrating that the Care Group methodology, when implemented well, is highly effective and cost-effective. The review of experiences included final evaluations conducted of six projects using the Care Group model and results from a Survey Monkey conducted prior to the meeting to solicit experiences with the Care Group model.