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OCR for page 138
Health Worker Roles in
Community Orientec!
Primary Care
John Hatch and Eager~ia Egg
Forces of change industrialization, urbanization, and rising expectations
constantly demand modification and adjustment in organizations and insti-
tutions that serve people. Displaced peasants throughout the world are
moving to urban centers in search of a better life, while those who remain
on the land pray for the relief they believe modern civilization can bring.
Black tenant farmers in North Carolina, after years of struggle, belatedly
joined the industrial revolution as textile workers and occupied the noisiest
and dirtiest jobs. Former subsistence farmers in the United Republic of
Cameroon, who have chosen to grow tobacco as a cash crop, were en-
couraged to seek new land and focus all of their efforts on tobacco. These
changes have caused severe disruption of traditional patterns of living, which
include the lack of access to schools, health services, and support systems
of small town or village life. Few regions on earth are immune to these
forces. Even when the changes are perceived as being progressive, the
potential for creating a less responsive social and economic system is great.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN COPC
Failure to involve community people in planned change will, at best, limit
the potential for service, and, at worst, result in social disorganization and
lead to gross compromise in the quality of life. There is evidence that our
ability to tolerate stressors within the broader environment is related to
the quality of relationships and the degree of social support we receive
from those who are closest to US.~-5 Therefore, is it reasonable to believe
138
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Health Worker Roles
139
that significant advance health can be achieved without the involvement of
community people and without attention paid tO the patterns of relation-
ships between and among those who are members of the community?
Planners in societies structured as differently as the Peoples' Republic
of China and our own have come tO realize the limitations of traditional
responses to the challenges of rapid change in an increasingly interdepen-
dent world. Activists and planners with skills in community organization
have followed the direction of redefining traditional roles and relationships.
Barefoot doctors, cholera control agents, outreach workers, nurse practi-
tioners, sanitation aides, health educators, and many many others are per-
forming roles as old and new as man himself. Their fucntions are to be
responsive to human needs, and as needs change so will their roles.
Health status is more an indicator and a symptom of inequality than its
cause. We agree with Dr. Sidney Kark that "changes in the environment,
standards of education, and social status as determined by occupation, ed-
ucation, and income exert greater influence than does the medical care
system on favorable mortality and morbidity trends, as well as on improve-
ments in health."6 If we as professionals committed to the practice of
community oriented primary care (COPC) agree with these statements,
then what exactly is the charge of the COPC health team? And more
specifically, what is expected of community health workers? Perhaps it
would be best tO begin with some widely held assumptions that tend to
impede development of COPC. Given these assumptions, we will then
attempt tO bring life and immediacy tO these questions by attaching real
people, events, and time to the evolution of the COPC health worker role
in America. We will draw on earlier experiments, for we believe, as.Iohn
Grant did, that health care should be a social service that must be provided
within the context of other basic social services.7 We can learn from the
observation that the many transactions that have taken place thus far be-
tween communities and professionals have not yet fulfilled this vision. A
review of several initial COPC efforts may clarify our concern that com-
munity involvement in human service planning and administation remains
conceptually incomplete.
SOME FALSE ASSUMPTIONS
Impeding the full development of COPC or any other community oriented
human service that is externally supported and controlled are three very
basic, yet false assumptions. The first assumption is that the commmunities'
priorities, norms, and values are sufficiently similar to those of the profes-
sional so as to provide a mutually rational framework for peer cooperative
action. The reality is that there have always been discrepancies between
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140
PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
the intentions of providers and the needs of consumers. This conclusion is
borne out by case study after case study of programs theoretically well
conceived that fail.8
The second false assumption is the belief that social diagnostic tools are
sufficiently well developed to provide the outsider professional with an
inside view. Household surveys, attitude, scales, interview schedules, eth-
nographic studies, locus of control, health belief models, and so on are
sometimes necessary but never enough for understanding how a community
of people operates, survives, and feels. These tools are certainly not the
solution for erasing the discrepancies between the intentions of profes-
sionals and the needs of communities.
The final assumption that impedes full development of COPC and makes
planning and administration conceptually incomplete is that professionals
have little to learn but a good deal to teach. Little recognition has been
given by the professional community tO the uniqueness of community
knowledge, skills, expertise, and experience for all aspects of program plan-
ning and implementation. The lack of dialogue between outsiders and in-
siders is not due to the community's lack of having something to say. It is
due to the difficulty in communication, both semantic and emotional, ex-
perienced by insiders and outsiders alike. Also, outsiders too frequently
forget why they need to involve communities when faced with the im-
mediacy of clinical intervention.
Kark and Abramson strongly support community involvement as an in-
tegral component of COPC so that certain key questions can be answered:
How do communities function? What are their networks? What is the formal
and informal leadership? What are the activities of day-to-day living? What
is the family and kinship structure? Community health workers are seen as
vital members of the COPC team in answering: "What is the state of the
community's health?"; "What factors are responsible for this state?"; "What
is being done about community health itself and by the services available?";
and "What are the community's perceptions and expectations about services
and about promoting itS own health care?"
The answers to all these questions are crucial pieces for community
involvement in program planning and implementation, but we must not
lose sight of why we need these answers. It is not because we need to
develop more effective persuasion tactics to increase health service utili-
zation delivered through a preconceived plan. It is not because community
health workers are to act as a one-way mirror through which the COPC
team reflects to the community what they have to offer. Rather, we need
the answers to these questions to help a COPC program strengthen the
abilities of a community tO influence itS own development, especially when
the community is removed from the mainstream. This may mean throwing
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141
preconceived, professional, and scientific notions of what is effective health
care delivery out the window. Although community needs and priorities
will rarely fit neatly into the health service delivery model, they will mesh
very closely with community development strategies. Fortunately, the two
approaches need not be mutually exclusive if we believe that community
development has a greater influence than medical care on improvements
in health status. COPC workers need not feel torn, for they are the link
in the middle.
The authors of this paper, because of ethnicity on the one hand and
education on the other, see themselves as occupying a middle-person role
with loyalties and roots in both the community of professional peers and
of ethnic brothers and sisters. We choose the term "middle" rather than
the more commonly used concept of"marginality," as we feel the former
more accurately conveys our sense of place within this spectrum. In our
case, the feeling of belonging to either in terms of an ordered state of being
is equally strong.
John Hatch, the first author, has his initial professional degree in social
work. The message transmitted through that educational experience as he
perceived it was that members of his ethnic group were a problem to
themselves and, consequently, placed limits on personal development. The
logical continuation of this line of thought was that he, too, might be a
problem. However, these notions were counterbalanced by his awareness
that the expert commentators on the status and mental state of his ethnic
group were not black. Later, while working as a community organizer for
the South End Settlement in Boston, he met scholars from MIT, Boston
University, Harvard, and other academic institutions in the region. He knew
that the professors from these universities were interested in understanding
how communities worked. He was not, however, aware at the time of the
power of theoreticians in developing social policy and in influencing strat-
r
egles tor active intervention.
Several years after these contacts, Hatch discovered that several papers,
as well as books, written by two of these professors and their students were
being cited by urban renewal and social planning officers as providing deep
insight into the functioning of Roxbury and the South End communities
of Boston. He took issue with those portions of their research considered
to be inaccurate or distorted. It was explained to him that he was too close
to the problem to offer an objective assessment. Although he was assured
that the scholars respected his ability as an implementer, Hatch was en-
couraged to entrust overall conceptualization to those who had been trained
to think objectively and in abstract terms, since they were the ones best
able to identify those options most likely to have a positive impact on future
generations.
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
Reliance on this research resulted in a decision, which was later reversed,
by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, to eliminate store front churches
from the communities. It has been reasoned that these churches exploited
the poor, prevented or compromised the ability of their congregations tO
focus on the real problems they faced, and were noisy and unsightly. An-
other researcher "discovered" that pimps were bright, had a strong self-
image, and tended toward action. These findings led to a decision to recruit
pimps as staff for community improvement programs. When placed in
positions of sanctioned authority, they, of course, proceeded to replicate
in the community the type of relationship they had previously established
with their women.
The sentiments and motivations that led to these outrageous violations
of judgment and common sense were quite probably well intentioned.
Indeed, there were very serious problems that warranted radical action.
However, the missing element in these and many other situations was not
only the shortage of technical skill needed to define community for the
perspective of the community's own sense of identity and priorities, but
also the recognition that there was another perspective.
During the course of preparing this paper, we were informed of the death
of one of the most effective community organizers in America over the
past half century. Amzie Moore, janitor, lead singer for the Delta Har-
moneers, deacon, civil rights worker, civic leader, and good neighbor died
in Cleveland, Mississippi. In 1965 Mr. Moore was president of the Bolivar
County Chapter of the Central Development Group of Mississippi, an
organization correctly perceived by state powers to be somewhat political.
In those days evaluation was used as a tool of control. As part of a site visit
to assess the quality of citizen participation in the local Head Start Program,
a meeting of community supporters, which included Mr. Moore, was held
at the Bright Star Baptist Church. The government senior evaluator, who
was a university professor, and his staff attended the meeting with Hatch.
Later, in discussing the meeting the senior evaluator complained that Moore
did not address the audience in terms that made any sense and that the
entire evening appeared closer to the rites he associated with exorcism than
with a discussion on the impact made by citizen involvement on the pro-
gram. However, after listening to Hatch's perceptions of the Bright Star
Church meeting, and checking with another trusted person, the evaluator
came to a better understanding of the meeting and could report more
accurately to the funding agency.
During this period, Hatch was involved in collecting ethnographic data
to be used in planning the Tufts-Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou,
Mississippi. Returning twice monthly to Boston, he was debriefed in ses-
sions held with Donald Kennedy, a medical anthropologist with the Tufts
Medical School, Department of Preventive Medicine. This experience was
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Health Worker Roles
143
invaluable in raising Hatch's awareness of cultural bias and assumptions.
He discovered that there were many important conceptual constructs es-
sential to the daily lives of seasonal workers and tenant farmers that phy-
sicians and social scientists did not know existed. We as credentialed workers
are still in the process of discovering, but only if we are willing to listen
and learn. We are poorer today because of our failure to collect and learn
from the wisdom of individuals like Amzie Moore. He had found the way
to nurture and inspire thousands of oppressed people toward redefining
their role in society. We know so little about the process he used.
This is not to say that there has not been any successful program in health
care and other human services that achieved a high degree of sensitivity in
itS relationship with the people it served. Over the past two decades, we
have known a number of movers and shakers in health care and other fields.
We are not sure of the characteristics that go into the making of successful
activists and community workers, but it is certain that they did not acquire
their motivation and skill in professional schools. These individuals can be
found among credentialed and uncredentialed persons. The credentialed
include people trained as nurses, sanitarians, physicians, social workers,
economists, lawyers, clergymen, public health workers, political scientists,
and horticulturists. Others involved with activism and community devel-
opment in health care include maids, laborers, farmers, fishermen, con-
struction workers, coal miners, pulpwood cutters, and others representing
a fair sampling of occupational groups in the United States. Of course, we
have a few hunches about the qualities that enable some individuals to rise
above others and inspire community action. Eugenia Eng is currently en-
gaged in research that examines characteristics that enable community lead-
ers tO lead. Which qualities are generic and which ones are culture-specific?
Can they be defined in terms of selection criteria for recruiting community
health workers? Can they be enhanced through a training program?
EXAMPLES OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN COPC
In an effort to better understand the role COPC workers should play in
the formulation of community action strategies leading to improved health
status, we will review two models of community and professional interaction
that produced, in our estimation, good results. It is hoped that the examples
will lead COPC toward identifying those principles that seem to contribute
most significantly to the favorable outcomes experienced.
South End Settlement
Between the years of 1940-1960, Boston witnessed a sixfold increase in
the number of black people in its population. When Hatch arrived in that
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
city in 1958, the "service crisis" caused by the influx of"newcomers" was
a permanent agenda item for board and staff conferees sponsored by health
and human services agencies serving inner-city communities. The newcom-
ers frequently delayed requests for services to the point of compromising
the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery. For example, parents often
failed to produce immunization and birth records when they were re-
quested. Boston professionals, and particularly those providing services to
the communities experiencing increased migration, had difficulty under-
standing the great differences between the norms, values, and functioning
of the newcomers and those of the older established black families in their
neighborhoods. Some had hypothesized that perhaps the older established
blacks had come from superior stock and were, therefore, better able to
adjust to the rigors of survival in the competitive New England environ-
ment. It was reasoned that the older established blacks had recognized the
value of northern migration two or three generations earlier and had not
required intensive agency support for adapting to northern urban patterns
of living.
Newcomer families, on the other hand, were not stable. It seemed that
newly arrived black males were especially vulnerable to the temptations of
urban life. Many developed drinking problems and left their families for
street life. Their children experienced learning difficulties in school. They
appeared to have problems with understanding spoken English and were
themselves unable to communicate clearly with their teachers or the children
of older established blacks. Newcomer children tended to be greatly ov-
errepresented in special classes for slow learners and the developmentally
. .
1mpa]LreC L.
In 1962 the South End Settlement, which was a Boston-based multi-
service organization, was faced with the dilemma of an increase in the
demand for services that was greater than its budget could tolerate. In an
attempt to deal with this situation, the agency agreed to support Hatch,
who was a community organizer trained in social work and a newcomer
himself, to mobilize community members to work as front-line workers for
the organization. Prior to this time, possession of a bachelor's degree had
been a prerequisite for employment with the Settlement House. Some
professional` employees extended warnings that declining quality of service
and loss of trust would be the probable outcome of this experiment. None-
theless, being the community organizer responsible for this effort, Hatch
knew that most of the problems encountered by newcomer families were
being managed within the network of community resources. He felt that
reinforcement of this system by the Settlement House would be more
effective and efficient than hiring two or three recent college graduates.
Hatch's knowledge of community-helping networks was gained in large
measure through his experience of living at Mrs. Bailey's rooming house
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145
on Columbus Avenue and being included into her social system. Mrs. Bailey
seemed tO know everybody for blocks around. She was an active church
woman, a member of the Sisters of the Eastern Star, and a former domestic
worker for several of Boston's influential families. She was active in her
block organization, fed alcoholics, and had conversations with the street
ladies who marketed their services from the corner nearest her house. In
addition to providing immaculately maintained living quarters, Mrs. Bailey's
roomers were given generous portions of wise advice on urban survival,
even though she would come forward with formidable support when failure
to heed her advice landed one in difficulty. On various occasions Hatch
had observed her negotiate a suspension of sentence for one of her roomers
who had been picked up in a corner dice game, provide counsel in lovers'
quarrels, place people in jobs, advise police on how best to intervene in
cases of domestic conflict, and confer with human service agencies before
deciding to refer her people to them. Hatch would sometimes accompany
Mrs. Bailey to special events and would be introduced as "one of her boys."
Her network spanned the spectrum of urban life-styles, and she appeared
sure of herself within each segment of her complex set of social relations.
Proud of her origins in rural western Tennessee, Mrs. Baily maintained
active linkages with friends and family still living there and often acted as
a sponsor and advocate for those who came to Boston in search of work.
She felt that lack of decency, trust, and respect were the major barriers to
achieving a good community and did her best to make this world a better
place. In discussing the development of the new Settlement House project
with Mrs. Bailey, Hatch received valuable guidance and was assured of her
support.
The five people hired as half-time workers for the project were members
of large community networks and fulfilled roles as advisers, counselors, and
linkers to the elaborate social system. Miss Troupe was a retired beautician
and had lived in Boston since taking a summer job there 40 years earlier.
Reverend Willie was the pastor of the storefront-housed Lily of the Valley
Holy Church. He, his wife, and five children lived above the church. Rev-
erend Willie supplemented his income from the church by renting rooms
in his home and working as a handyman. He had lived in the South Carolina
low country prior to moving north to join his brother, who worked at the
Navy Yard. Miss Holly was a retired nurses' aide from Children's Hospital
and had remained active as an adviser on child health and social problems
to the community, linking people to an astounding array of professional
and neighborhood support services. She wrote letters for persons who felt
insecure dealing with bureaucracies to obtain the necessary documents for
employment or for admitting children into the Boston school system. Ad-
ditionally, Miss Holly knew each person offering informal home child care
and held strong opinions and accurate information on the different levels
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
of quality. The fifth worker was Miss Connie, who at that time was employed
as a part-time domestic, but had traveled the nation as a dancer. She had
settled down in her middle years, but maintained ties with persons of the
night life and entertainment world. She would not take jobs that required
reporting for work before 10:00 a.m., for she felt that the best part of the
day was the night, and she wanted to enjoy at least a part of the best.
Orientation for the team of community front-line workers was carried
out in a seminar format, focusing on the Settlement House's history, phi-
losophy, and minimum standards for record keeping and employee ac-
countability. Completing case records was a collaborative effort in which
Hatch guided the interviews in accordance with standard case work pro-
tocol, recorded them on tape, and summarized the content for the agency's
permanent files.
In retrospect, the relationship between the Settlement House and the
community workers could be construed as being somewhat exploitive, be-
cause they worked more hours than they were paid for and were available
during evenings and weekends. However, they did seem to appreciate the
recognition and especially the title of Social Outreach Workers. Each of
them carried an active case load larger than any one carried by the agency's
professional workers. During his 3 years of working with them, neither
Hatch nor the agency had received complaints from a client. There were,
however, points of conflict with professionals from other health and human
service organizations.
Miss Connie had used strong language with the social worker at the
Travelers' Aid Society when, during the course of discussing a case, the
social worker had said that the society would do all it could to send the
colored girls back where they belonged. Miss Troupe had caused a minor
incident by forcing her way into a child custody hearing to defend the right
of a sometime, part-time prostitute to maintain custody of her children on
the grounds that this woman was a good mother. She had asked the ad-
judicators if any of them had ever violated the legally prescribed norms of
sexual behavior and added her opinion that, if they had not, then she felt
sorry for them. Another conflict occurred when Reverend Willie had man-
aged to have a basketball court paved but had neglected to gain approval
from the city before negotiating with cement truck drivers to dump their
surplus at the site. The Settlement House had been working with the city's
Department of Parks and Recreation for quite some time to carry out this
task, but shortage of funds was continually given as a reason for why it
could not be done.
The team of Social Outreach Workers survived these and other conflicts
with the established health and human service delivery system. As a result
of this process, the known pool of resources had been vastly expanded,
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147
and the latter agency had gained respect and trust from the community due
to its association with the Social Outreach Workers.
Hatch met with them on a weekly basis to discuss and assess the course
of their work. In time they began to observe certain patterns. Young women
who had entered the city as domestics with no support from friends or
family comprised a disproportionate percentage of the agency's case load.
These women were being exploited by some of the employment agencies
that had recruited them from the South, by their employers at times, and
finally by streetwise males on the women's days off. As evidence for these
patterns became stronger, the Social Outreach Workers felt that they should
act to prevent these occurrences rather than continually react to the crisis.
The agency community organizer wondered quietly how a young social
worker, a holiness preacher, and four middle-aged and older women could
possibly make a dent in an activity highly valued by persons with vested
interests in prostitution and the drug trade.
Miss Connie suggested going to the suburban bus terminal on Thursdays
from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to talk to women getting off the bus who
looked like maids coming to the city for weekends off from work in the
suburbs. Lack of anything to do in the evening was identified as a major
problem for these women. The Social Outreach Workers also discovered
that pimps, pushers, and hustlers were also meeting the buses. The four
women and Reverend Willie met with each of the employment agencies
tO inform them of the situation. Miss Troupe set aside a room in her house
and identified other people who were able to offer shelter to maids on
their days off. More importantly, it was anticipated that the renters of rooms
would also provide advice and counselling to these newcomer women. The
selection of these renters was made with this expectation explicitly stated.
Within 6 months the NAACP, local women's organizations, other health
and human service agencies, storefront churches, and fundamentalist evan-
gelical churches joined a planning group to consider the needs of single
women migrating to Boston to work as domestics. The up-front, no-non-
sense character of the Social Outreach Workers enabled them to cut through
bureaucratic protocol and objections that could have been barriers for a
professional. The NAACP representative, for example, intially questioned
the merits of an effort aimed at improving the status of domestic workers
rather than providing them with assistance to find other occupations. Miss
Holly responded by reminding him that his mother had been a maid when
he was a boy, and that if she were still alive, she would want him to use
his education to improve conditions instead of criticizing.
After 18 months the program received funding from the United Fund
and the Department of Labor. A service aimed at upgrading the skills of
domestic workers was staffed by Mrs. Bailey and several wealthy women
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PART I THEORETICAL ISSUES
who had formerly been her employers. Posttraining salaries were, on the
average, 50 percent higher, and all domestic employment was covered by
contracts specifying duties, obligations, and responsibilities. The program
continues to operate under the sponsorship of the League of Black Women
and has a Board of Directors that is broadly representative of the inner-
city communities. This group was eventually able to lobby the Massachusetts
state legislature to pass regulations protecting domestic workers.
Willingness and conviction to upset the status quo through unorthodox
means of intervention—cussing sometimes, praying other times are nec-
essary for transcending barriers that separate people from their rights to
services. To whittle down the barriers means establishing a double flow of
communications going up-down and down-up by developing interactions
and rapport such as that described between the Social Outreach Workers
and the professional social worker who coordinated their efforts. Their
intricate and unique knowledge of their community, coupled with a degree
of honesty from professionals who felt uncomfortable with Miss Connie's
statement of "Who in the hell gave you the right to determine where black
women should live?" was much more effective in helping an agency identify
an appropriate intervention than a professional conference on perspectives
would have ever been.
MOUND BAYOU
Our second example of meaningful interaction between communities and
professionals occurred in 1965, when the Department of Preventive Med-
icine of the Tufts University School of Medicine gained support from the
Office of Economic Opportunity tO develop a health center in Bolivar
County, Mississippi—a site 1,400 miles from its home base in Boston. In
addition to responding to the desperate needs of the citizens in this county,
it was felt that a health center in Mississippi would provide professionals
with insights into the social norms, values, health attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviors of a population that was becoming increasingly important to health
and human service agencies working with the inner-city districts of Roxbury,
South End, and Columbia Point. It was also felt at that time that the nation
had at least decided that all of itS citizens were entitled tO health care.
Believing that national health care coverage would surely come within
the decade, energies were shifted from advocacy focusing on the passage
of legislation tO the search for a health care model that would improve the
health status of the population as well as be responsive to the legitimate
demands of communities. Each of the three individuals primarily responsible
for the design of the Mound Bayou model brought with them prior ex-
periences that would strongly influence the structure of that project.
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
was for Eng to find out when the director had scheduled a visit to the
Gad jagan dispensary, and the village chief would be sure to be present on
that day.
The reasoning behind this particular choice of action was that they wanted
the nurse to be replaced but not fired, for they believed him to be a basically
decent man with a drinking problem, and they wanted to be sure that the
authorities understood the problem to be manageable if appropriately mon-
itored. Writing letters was not felt to be an effective means for achieving
these objectives, nor was it a method of communication with which they
felt comfortable. Interpersonal interaction was, and so the leader of the
community would speak with the leader of professionals.
The director arrived as scheduled and inspected the clinic records and
facilities, making note of the low-utilization rate and paucity of drugs and
equipment. A message was sent that the village chief wished to greet him
in his home. It was there that the problem was introduced and discussed
fully. Within a month the nurse was transferred to a dispensary outside of
the region and replaced by another who was just as unenthusiastic about
outreach, but did not have a drinking problem. Over the course of the next
3 years, while Eng was still working in Togo, the director of maternal and
child health services always asked about the people of Gad jagan whenever
he saw her. The experience for him was as meaningful as it was for the
community, because it linked him to and demystified the world of the
villagers to some degree.
By combining their own wisdom and priorities with new knowledge about
the provider system, the people of Gad jagan sharpened their ability to
function as partners with professionals in problem resolution. Their rep-
ertoire of legitimate choices was expanded, and they gained more confi-
dence about what they already know and do. By arranging the meeting
between the director and their traditional village leader, the community
was actively involved in the entire process of conflict resolution with the
health care system. The health workers did not intervene on the commu-
nity's behalf by either writing letters for them or going directly to the
director to present him with the problem to arrive at a solution about input
from those who are experiencing it. The act of linking the community to
available resources became one of enablement enabling it to experience
a sense of influence and control over its own community's welfare and
development.
COPC workers can and must fulfill a third role, that of enabler, by facil-
itating community action in which the worker does not take the lead, but
is there to support community initiative and momentum. Choices, potential
obstacles, and possible consequences are the contributions of an enabler.
The final decision and commitment to work toward it must come, however,
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157
from the community. There is a difference between working "on behalf
of,' and "at the behest of." Who has the most vested interest in effecting
change? Who is more effective in persuading policymakers, decision makers,
and other officials to respond than the ones who are not being treated
equitably? By mobilizing community resources, COPC workers can make
a significant contribution to community development. Leadership and, most
certainly, the desire for a more satisfactory quality of life exist within any
community. COPC workers need to be trained in community organization
skills to be able to identify and strengthen indigenous leadership to meet
that desire by developing strategies with them as peers. Reducing barriers
to health care may be a first step in the enabling process, but it definitely
is not the final one.
In conclusion, we see the challenge for COPC workers as that of being
able to:
. translate the perspective of communities and of professionals to each
other;
. link communities to the resources available from professionals, as well
as link professionals to the strengths and ingenuity of communities; and
. enable communities to take full advantage of the resources and knowl-
edge for initiating community action.
If the vision of COPC is to increase the abilities of poor and near-poor
people to influence their own community development, then are COPC
workers ready tO extend their arena into social and political action? If COPC
truly believes that changes in the environment, standards of education, and
social status have a greater effect than the medical care system on health
improvements, then are COPC workers ready tO go beyond the use of
biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, and biomedical services for defining the
problem? As we stated in the beginning of this paper, poor health status
is an indicator and a symptom of inequality, not its cause. Will COPC
continue to treat the symptom and not the cause?
There is a wealth of knowledge, experience, and skills for dealing more
effectively with the causes of health status. COPC has been unable to draw
upon and use this knowledge to date. It is out there with the communities
in which we work and with the ones we want to involve in program planning
and implementation. At times we recognize it but do not know what to do
with it. At times we look for it but do not see it. And then there are the
times when we both see it and use it and a true partnership begins. COPC
workers and supporters have all had some experience with a meaningful
relationship between communities and themselves. We shared some of ours
in an attempt to identify those principles that seemed to contribute to
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
favorable outcomes and to offer more reasons for why COPC is the hope
for neglected communities.
REFERENCES
1. Cassell, John (1974) An Epidemiological Perspective on the Psychosocial Factors
in Disease Etiology. Am. /. Public Health 64(November): 11.
2. lames, Sherman, and Kleinbaum, David (1976) Socioecologic Stress and Hy-
pertension Related Mortality Rates in North Carolina. Am. ]. Pablic Health
66(April):4.
3. DuBois, Renee, and.Tackson, Barbara Ward (1972) Only One Earth: The Care
and Maintenance of a Small Planet. Norton: New York.
4. Geiger, H. Tack (1969) Health Center in Mississippi. Hosp. Pract. 4(February):68.
5. Hatch, John (1978) Self-Help and Consumer Participation in the Development
of the Health Care System. Ann. N.Y. A cad. Sci. 310(June 21).
6. Kark, Sidney (1981) Practice of Commanity-Oriented Primary Health Care. New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
7. Seipp, Conrade (1963) Health Care for the Community: Selected Papers of John
Grant. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
8. Paul, Benjamin (1955) Health, Culture, and Community. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Discussants
Richard Smith
I have been, and continue to be, critical of primary health care (PHC) or
community oriented primary care (COPC) as it iS characterized by hundreds
of demonstration or pilot projects scattered around the world, limited in
scope and funds, and predominantly serving the needs of the sponsoring
institutions and donor agencies that carry them out. The wreckages of
increasing numbers of these small projects are strewn across the landscape
of scores of countries. And along with these projects are the imagery and
reputation and future of PHC. Confidence in PHC as a viable entity is
being eroded at the local village level by the combination of unbridled zeal
to do something~nything—on one hand, and the inability tO follow through
with successful programs and resources scaled up to meaningful levels, on
the other. Much of this is being described with a "diarrhetoric" that talks
of success as if we already know how to provide PHC to the majority of
populations. Such is far from the truth. And such are my fears for COPC
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in this country, along with economic crunch, that is going to stall progress
. .
ln tn1S arena.
I would like to take this brief time to talk about two related issues: (1)
community involvement in primary care and (2) the roles of nonphysician
providers of primary care services.
Health services in developed countries like the United States are rigid
and resistant to change entrenched and tracked with organized medicine,
institutions of education, and technology development. They seem resistent
to change when compared tO emerging health systems in the less indus-
trialized world. In the Third World, the movement in health is to get out
from under the often inappropriate, irrelevant, resource-consuming yoke
of the Western medical mode. And there is much for those of us in de-
veloped countries to learn from the Third World, as many developing
countries are opting for primary health care as a guiding force.
PHC overseas is defined with much more community involvement in
the health system. It is seriously concerned with other sectors that impinge
on health and vice versa. We can take safe water supplies and solid waste
disposal almost for granted in our country; 80 percent of the world cannot.
Health and well-being for most of the world has to be concerned with such
things as: food production, preparation, preservation, and storage; immu-
nization against common preventable diseases; income generation from
cottage industries; oral rehydration of children before they defecate them-
selves to death; transportation and marketing of goods; and curative care
of common health problems. These are but a few of the components of
PHC as viewed in the Third World. But they are the guts of COPC or
PHC in those nations and have to actively involve the community, since
limited resources mean that for the most part they have to be self-sufficient.
However, as John Hatch describes it, we still talk here in the United States
of PHC as a "top-down" laying on of hands, doing things in the community
for the community, to the community, and less so with the community.
The message coming out of Professor Hatch's paper that needs reiteration
is that the American community has something to contribute tO its well-
being in this scheme we call COPC. The message coming out of the de-
veloping country experience is the same.
The economic dilemmas we face now in health care are going tO worsen.
As they do, the poor and the minorities and the elderly will suffer more.
The communities many of us work with will be changing in character.
Middle America will have to face the same biting winds of change, with
pain familiar to many of us. The present health system in our country is
weighted heavily towards technology, services, and resources instead of
needs It will have tO respond tO the present call for reform in a way different
from the marketplace predictions. I think we will see opportunities for
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COPC increasing I repeat- the opportunities will increase. However, I
am an idealist and have no illusions that the American people want to take
advantage of these opportunities and read history; so frequently they seem
only to want to write it.
The history I am talking about reading refers to the efforts that have
been made to identify the character of"working-together behavior," dem-
onstrating that health professionals can and will work on a large scale with
people in their communities who are prepared to assume their rightful role
in responsibility for their own well-being. It is an investment behavior that
is different when one is part of a truly COPC program, one characterized
by responsibilities that "bubble up" as well as "trickle down."
The history I am talking about is the experience with extenders of health
services over the past two decades (e.g., physician extenders, nurse prac-
titioners). I have been involved in that experience, working not only with
new health professions roles, but with equal concern for the management
support systems that form the receptive framework in which those people
are to work. We have been engrossed in creating roles with linkages and
translating capabilities between doctors and their communities. In our work
in the Third World, the intermediate-level workers that we generically refer
to as "medex" (most of whom are nurses) are now operating connectors,
bridging the technical and cognitive distance between high-level profes-
sionals and communities. The enabling mechanism has been created.
The history I am talking about are the bonuses that this kind of COPC
can bring to fee-for-service doctors if they have the guts and smarts to
pursue it. I am talking about the increase in income and leisure time for
physicians, the increase in coverage of some practices, and the maintenance
of quality care that has been demonstrated in practices with medex-type
workers. I am talking about the cost containment and, in some instances,
demonstrated savings that resulted from the use of these primary care
providers that can be passed on to consumers. But now that movement has
plateaued and has actually begun to diminish for reasons that may not
withstand the coming economic difficulties.
The history I am talking about is the spreading of work of people like
Ruth Lubic, producing 40 percent savings potential to patients and com-
munities using birthing centers staffed by nurse-midwives. I refer to the
use of nurse-anesthetists who give nearly half of the anesthesia in this
country, while anesthesia residencies for physicians, already reduced in
number, go unfilled each year. Someone else has had to fill the role, of
necessity.
This history that will be recorded in the next few months is work by
McMaster University's Gregg Stoddard. I refer to a study that found that
Canada could have saved S200 million in 1980 if the country had a na-
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tionwide nurse-practitioner program. That number was a rock-bottom con-
servative estimate, and Stoddard feels that between $500 to S600 million
is a more realistic figure. Extrapolating that figure, which was for insured
ambulatory services only under direct physician supervision, tO our own
country, where we have proven that this type of worker can do much more
with physicians and hospitals and communities, there could be an estimated
annual cost savings of 55.5 billion.
The possible working combinations involving communities, nurses, be-
haviorists, doctors, community workers, and others to meet the needs of
COPC are part of our history. Do we have tO wait two more decades to
catch up with the Third World in appreciating the role of the community
in PHC? Do we have tO be helpless spectators to nursing and medicine
locked in their own agonies of change and adaptation. I think we would
see nursing as the template for COPC in this country if we all could only
look through the swirling dust together as we prepare for our roles in the
strained period ahead. These problems and the history glaring at us are the
backdrop against which the next difficult act is to be played.
Fry W. Whitney
The title of Dr. Hatch and Ms. Eng's paper is disarmingly broad for a nurse
who views all patient contacts in primary care as health care contacts, thereby
defining all who deliver care as "health workers." Their emphasis is upon
the community-based person who may or may not be a formally trained
health professional, but who is used to help integrate primary health care
services into an existing community. My emphasis is on nursing and nurse
. . . .
practitioners In particular.
An early (1929) model of COPC nursing is the Frontier Nursing Service,
where midwives and public health nurses, responding tO community needs,
brought to the hills of Kentucky a kind of health care that met not only
the immediate need, but that has endured more than 50 years. Their epi-
demiologic mode was called case-findings and has been the basis of primary
nursing care since the beginning of nursing history. Early in my public
health career, I found, perhaps less elegantly than the many examples in
Dr. Hatch's presentation, the lesson of his three false assumptions. I began
to fashion my practice after the needs of the community as they were
expressed and found they were not very different from the professional
intent just different in emphasis. I learned the language and, without
throwing away my tools, learned how to build relationships that told me
what the "real world" was.
I was helped to understand by able teachers, my patients, their friends,
and their neighbors that there was much to learn about people and how
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
they behaved that no amount of formal education could bring to bear. More
importantly, I learned the law of the consumer if they don't want it, they
won't buy it. We call it noncompliance- they call it "no sale." What is often
forgotten as we go about our planning for health services is that the initial
choice to use or not use services rests in the hands of the patient. As Keith
Bolden has said, "the patient is the cornerstone." It is only after he has
given himself up to the system that he is in danger of losing control of
choice. In primary care, the patient never truly does so.
In teaching nurses to be nurse practitioners, what one does is move the
center of focus from acute to primary care. Nurses are largely educated in
acute care settings. Nurses with baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral degrees
have some practice in community health, but they comprise only 15 percent
of the nurses. Less than 30 percent of nurse practitioners are baccalaureate
prepared. It is an interesting task to reorient the nurse to situations where
it is the patient who determines whether or not he will follow the plan
prescribed. Nurses are edgy and angry when patients return and have not
"complied" with "what they were told."
Dr. Hatch has suggested that community health workers can perform at
least three tasks: (1) translator, (2) linker, and (3) enabler. Each of these
tasks is concerned with negating the three false assumptions that he feels
will impede the development of COPC in any community. The tasks are
role-related. In the last 15 years, nurse practitioners have been very suc-
cessful in primary care. They, too, have been translators, linkers, and en-
ablers. Dr. Hatch suggests that the communication role is vital to both
understanding and change strategies that will have lasting effects on the
population. Nurses learn to view the patient/provider interaction as a team
event early in their practice.
The nurse is a credible provider in primary care, because the background
brought to delivery of service is an action-oriented, patient-centered thought
process, concerned with seeing an outcome rather than merely entering an
input. Many recent studies show the effect of adult nurse practitioners
(ANP) in reducing numbers of hospital visits, pediatric nurse practitioners
in increasing patient compliance with well-child regimens, and nurse mid-
wives in reducing the number of low-birth-weight babies born out of hos-
pitals. There is evidence of improved hypertensive outcome in ANP clinics
and reduction in the number of low-birth-weight babies and child abuse
following delivery in Teen Pregnancy Programs, run by nurse practitioners
in high schools. Patients' attitudes of acceptance and positiveness toward
their care with nurse practitioners probably stem from a long history of
patient-centered nursing practice. Nurses use health workers in the com-
munity more fully than other providers. The nurse knows and accepts these
vital people as part of practice and can use the communication network
that is provided with less confusion than many of the other health workers.
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The linker is a person whose role is finding resources in the community
that are not commonly known. Every profession or service provider has
"contacts," people who can help unwind the famous "web of causality." The
linker gives the provider true diagnostic tools from an inside perspective,
teaching them the role that will effectively accomplish the patient/provider
mutuality of purpose. Nurses have acted as the informant "linkers" for
years. They are the second opinion in the neighborhood. As nurse prac-
titioners they continue to use this system in productive ways.
The enabling role is the role that produces the effect. It is the role that
must come third. It requires successful working through of the other two.
The enabling role is one that requires skills in negotiation. The political
and power elements of the community are involved. Often, in this situation,
the provider becomes the liaison, the translator, and the linker. They are
effective only if they have maintained appropriate relationships with the
power structures outside and inside the community and can bring credence
to the situaton based on understanding and power within that structure.
Nurses have long been enablers. They have been called "handmaidens,"
"left and right hands," "advocates," "go betweens," and "gap fillers," and,
of late, some less admirable things such as meddlers and protagonists or
competitors. In primary care, nurses are often the vehicle through which
things get done. They have been inordinately successful. They are often
the ones closest to the community and tO the establishment. They live
where primary care patients are. Our figures relating to graduates show
that of 250 graduates, 75 percent have returned to the underserved areas
from which they came. National figures show that 69 percent of nurse
practitioners are practicing in primary care, most of them in inner-city or
rural areas.
I am constantly asked, what do nurse practitioners do? After 2 days of
this conference, I can say with assurance, they practice in a COPC model
as part of a health team, responding in individual ways to meet the needs
of the "community," however defined, in which they find themselves. An-
other question is, are they effective? The terms effective and efficient are
often intermixed. Efficiency is often used to describe the outcome as ef-
fective. How many patients can they see? Effectiveness is more complex
than efficiency. Nurse practitioners do not see as many patients per minute
as physicians. If they do, they are probably not doing an effective job as a
nurse practitioner. We do know that 50-51 percent more patients are seen
in practices with nurse practitioners and physician's assistants; that they
provide 64-73 percent more direct patient care time in practices than was
provided before; and that practices with nurse practitioners have a 42-51
percent increase in income. But primarily, nurse practitioners must be
concerned with whether services produce desired results lasting effects
and changes in social and personal structures. There have been many ef-
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ficient services. Even in Togo, walls were painted, education classes held,
mothers taught, but still mothers did not come; services were not effective.
It is this aspect of COPC that makes it so important to understand and
accept the roles of health workers other than physicians.
From my perspective, there are some threats to COPC that will have an
impact upon its effectiveness in the United States. The Graduate Medical
Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) report, while telling
us that there will be an oversupply of total numbers of physicians, warns
that there will not be an oversupply of primary care physicians. It also tells
us that relocation of physicians to primary care settings will not be over-
whelming. The National Institutes of Health predict that, although 60-70
percent should be in primary care, only 39 percent will be. The GMENAC
report does suggest holding firm on the introduction of increased numbers
of nurse practitioners and physician assistants during the next 10 years,
until it can be seen whether physicians will take up primary care roles. It
is my guess that they will not. However, regardless of what medicine does,
it is inaccurate and short-sighted to suggest that limiting the practice of one
category of health professionals will necessarily affect the problems of mal-
distribution within another. Studies have proven that nurse practitioners,
while they share many primary care roles, do provide distinct and needed
services in primary care. We know that much of the move to block adoption
of appropriate legislation for the practice of nurse practitioners in several
states has been through physician groups. In New York State, this is true.
They appear to want control of the practice of nurses who might compete
with them. They want to hold in line all health professionals so that they
may direct all activities in health. Several speakers have stressed a different
tack for the future in COPC. Donald Madison called for a team of health
providers to share and develop methods of health delivery. Luana Reyes
said that it was not a medical community that must be developed, but a
heal~h-conscious community. Nora Piore spoke to a deployment of re-
sources that was a reflection of the epidemiologic needs of the community.
Dr. Guerrero outlined a WHO definition of primary care that could not
possibly be fulfilled by a single health professional. To Steve Joseph's four
pillars, I would add a fifth—other health workers. As David Kindig suggests,
studies of communities will help define services, and, I would add, not
unless the kind and number of providers available for particular purposes
. . .
are written Into t. he equation.
Another threat is the present payment mechanisms that exist for reim-
bursing health providers for services. Fred Diaz suggests there are two kinds
of patients those who can pay and those who cannot. The largest block
of patients are those who do not but rely on third-party payers. The fee-
for-service structure, coupled with third-party reimbursement that centers
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most of its payback on high-technology services, rather than preventive,
primary care, has sent us reeling toward uncontrollable costs in the past 10
years. Although there has been legislation to ensure that health care is a
"right," none of the plans to support it have included increasing costs for
primary, preventive services, nor to include other, less costly, effective
health workers in the payment scheme. Weston's study (Weston, 1980)
regarding nurse practitioners shows that nurse practitioners in rural, un-
derserved areas are largely deterred by lack-of-payment mechanisms for
their services. Except in some federally designated centers, services pro-
vided by health professionals other than physicians cannot be reimbursed.
Many of the clinics that might have fallen under the Rural Health Act were
unable to fit the guidelines. Many closed. No health care replaced the
primary health care provided by nurses and physician assistants in these
clinics. Primary nursing services, many of which are the needed services in
the communities and which interact with the social, environmental, and
community life-style needs, cannot now be purchased through third-party
reimbursement mechanisms. Although I share Karen Davis' optimism for
the increasing role of health care providers in helping define and direct the
distribution of scarce resources in the coming months, I see little movement
to include primary care nurses in the decision-making process. To exclude
them is to maintain an economic status quo that will not only topple the
economic health of the nation, but also fail to develop the needed team
concept of COPC and, in the long run, fail the citizens who need our
combined advocacy to create a climate of health and productivity.
Last, continued dependence upon the vertical hierarchy of present-day
organization of services will not bring us closer to usable models in primary
care. We need to understand and implement matrix structures in health,
with multiple providers and varied project and functional roles. There are
many roads to health. It is important that the organizational structure of
services does not form the roadblock to utilization and ultimately to access.
COPC services must have flexible structures that reflect the best mix of
people, payment mechanism, and methodology to do the task.
If we are to look at health care as part and parcel of the social and
environmental structure of the community, we cannot continue to weave
a fiber that has only one dominant profession, a single answer, or an eco-
nomic and organizational structure that is neither efficient nor effective.
Use of community health workers, nurses, physicians, social workers, home
health aides, respite programs, day care centers, elder programs, and the
like will be a better approach to team solving of complex issues in the
community.
Dr. Geiger has asked, is COPC a romantic dream or a practical necessity?
From my view, we do not have the luxury of the romantic dream. The
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PART I: THEORETICAL ISSUES
necessity is upon us, and the solution is practical. To Dr. Abramson's two
essential elements we must add multidisciplinary health team. Without this
there is no ability to provide an integrative curative, rehabilitive, preventive,
and promotive plan or comprehensive approach, as outlined in the essential
elements of COPC.
We need a team, whose captain is the patient, whose playing field is the
community in which he lives, whose league is made up of a broader scope
of players, and whose coaching staff has the good sense to call upon each
other to provide their special skills for the purpose of winning the many
faceted game of health delivery. Because we have already begun, I am sure
we can do it together.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
health worker
