Behavior Change (public Health) - Care Group

Care Group

A Care Group is a group of 10-15 volunteer, community-based health educators who regularly meet together with NGO project staff for training and supervision. Each of these volunteers then go out at least monthly to do health promotion with a small cohort of mothers of young children. They are different from typical mothers’ support groups in that each volunteer is responsible for regularly visiting 10-15 of her neighbors, sharing what she has learned and facilitating behavior change at the household level. Care Groups create a multiplying effect to equitably reach every beneficiary household with interpersonal behavior change communication. They also provide the structure for a community health information system that reports on new pregnancies, births and deaths detected during home visits. The model was created by World Relief in 1995 and pioneered by Food for the Hungry and [[World Relief since then. The Core Group published a Care Group manual in October 2010.

Since 1995, World Relief, Food for the Hungry, and 20 other nongovernmental organizations in more than 20 countries have adopted the Care Group model, largely with the support of the US Agency for International Development. The CORE Group has helped document and disseminate the model, and there has been increased attention to the model and its effectiveness in lowering child deaths