Mapping common job demands and job resources for large-scale community health worker programmes in Southern Africa: protocol for a scoping review

Introduction High burdens of infectious and non-communicable diseases and human resource shortages strain primary healthcare systems in Southern Africa. Despite the widespread use of community health workers (CHWs) across the region, the existing literature offers no holistic exploration of the characteristics of CHWs' work.

The Job Demands-Resources model provides a framework to enable such a review, positing that two aspects of working conditions - job demands and job resources - are unique to each workplace but have universal impacts on workers' health, motivation and the achievement of organisational aims. Methods and analysis The population, concept and context framework will guide the development of a comprehensive search strategy to source reports on CHWs working in large-scale programmes that explore job demands and job resources within at least one Southern African Development Community country.

Searches to identify peer-reviewed articles and grey literature will be done in CHW Central, CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus and the WHO Library with citations purposively mined.