TY - GEN AU - Bua-ay, Maria Teresa O. AU - Cruzada, Evelyn C. (Chairperson) AU - Delim, Gracelyn P. (Institutional Partner) AU - De Guzman, Angelo C. (External Expert) TI - Improving the quality of primary health care services through competency building strategies of the barangay health workers in Sta. Paxedes, Cagayan KW - Barangay Health Workers KW - Primary health care Strategy KW - Public health N1 - Graduate School of Public and Development Management N2 - The call for 'Health for All' under the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978 aimed to ensure that the poorest of the poor and the marginalized would be provided with essential health services via Primary Health Care Strategy. This once again highlighted in view of the Aquino Health Agenda, namely the 'Kalusugang Pangkalahatan', to address inequities in health outcomes by ensuring that all Filipinos have equitable access to quality health care. Sta. Praxedes, Cagayan, exhibits inadequate accessibility to health care with its own centralized health care delivery system, whereby the RHU located in the town capital is the only existing health facility to deliver basic healthcare services among its ten barangays. Considering its mountainous geographic feature , patients from the distant barangays need to travel to the town capital just to avail of primary health care services, resulting to an additional out-of-pocket expenditure for health from its financially burdened community. The Barangay Health Workers are recognized as the frontline praimary healthcare providers in the municipality under the Primary Health Care approach. Their capacitation therefore is a strategy to strengthen the local health system in the delivery of quality primary health care in the grassroots level in ways that are responsive, efficient, financially fair and efficient. Competency building strategies of the BHWs using the 6 building blocks of the health system were utilized to improve the quality of health care services in the municipality. Several strategies under the 6 strategic instruments such as the development of health policies to accredit and regulate the BHWs, involvement of the stakeholders through the counter parting scheme in financing the competency training program, development a customized and vernacularized BHW manual and training program, creation of intra-referral forms for the BHWs and the RHU, provision of the basic medical equipment and supplies and uniform t-shirts boosted the morale and competencies of the Barangay Health workers as the frontline health care providers in the provision of quality primary health care services in the barangays of the municipality ER -