Village Health Volunteer

A locally-recruited lay community health worker who serves as a trusted bridge between formal healthcare services and households in rural or underserved areas. In Thailand, VHVs are trained and coordinated by the Ministry of Public Health (typically with around 70 hours of training) to deliver health information, basic monitoring, and rehabilitation support to neighbours and family caregivers. VHVs are central to Community-Based Rehabilitation programs and similar models across low- and middle-income countries, where they extend the reach of overstretched clinical systems but often operate under significant resource and training constraints.