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Abstract

1Background: Community health workers are essential personnel in resource-limited settings. In Uganda, 2 they are organized into Village Health Teams (VHTs) and are focused on infectious diseases and 3 maternal-child health; however, their skills could potentially be utilized in national efforts to reduce the 4 growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). We sought to assess the knowledge of, and 5 attitudes toward NCDs and NCD care among VHTs in Uganda as a step toward identifying their potential 6 role in community NCD prevention and management. 7Methods: We administered a knowledge, attitudes and practices questionnaire to 68 VHT members from 8Iganga and Mayuge districts in Eastern Uganda. In addition, we conducted four focus group discussions 9 with 33 VHT members. Discussions focused on NCD knowledge and facilitators of and barriers to 10 incorporating NCD prevention and care into their role. A thematic qualitative analysis was conducted to 11 identify salient themes in the data. 12Results: VHT members possessed some knowledge and awareness of NCDs but identified a lack of 13 knowledge about NCDs in the communities they served. They were enthusiastic about incorporating 14 NCD care into their role and thought that they could serve as effective conduits of knowledge about 15NCDs to their communities if empowered through NCD education, the availability of proper reporting 16 and referral tools, and visible collaborations with medical personnel. The lack of financial remuneration 17 for their role did not emerge as a major barrier to providing NCD services. 18Conclusions: Ugandan VHTs saw themselves as having the potential to play an important role in 19improving community awareness of NCDs as well as monitoring and referral of community members for 20 NCD-related health issues. In order to accomplish this, they anticipated requiring context-specific and 21 culturally adapted training as well as strong partnerships with facility-based medical personnel. A lack of 22 financial incentivization was not identified to be a major a barrier to such role expansion. Developing a 23 PeerJ Preprints | https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3196v1 | CC BY 4.0 Open Access | rec Declarations 349Ethical approval and consent to participate: This study received ethical approval from the Human 350