Time Volunteered on Community Health Activities by Brigadistas in Nicaragua

“Brigadistas de Salud” are unpaid volunteers trained by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health to implement the National Community Programme for Health and Nutrition. Brigadistas are part of an integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) strategy that aims to deliver life-saving curative health interventions for common childhood illnesses in communities with little access to facility-based services. 

With the approval of a plan to expand the scope of iCCM to include further health care provision, this study sets out to investigate how Brigadistas in Nicaragua volunteer their time, and whether the expanded duties and responsibilities risk threatening their thus-far remarkable motivation.