This article analyzes the initial results of a primary health care program in Mexico in which rural residents are being trained to serve as health agents in their communities. Particular emphasis is placed on variability in results attributable to agent and nurse supervisor characteristics supervisor/community ratios and population sizes of the communities served. This analysis is restricted to the results in the 3000 communities with service statistics in 1978. Overall new acceptors of family planning averaged 2.0 per agent-month in 1978 and 1.7 in 1979. At the end of 1978 coverage rates were 10% in terms of new acceptors and 7% with regard to continuing users; by mid-1979 these figures had risen to 16% and 11% respectively. Correlation analysis suggested that agent productivity was higher when the nurse supervisors were over 25 years of age married with children and had been trained as nursing auxiliaries or graduate nurses. Similarly agents 30 years of age and above were more productive than their younger counterparts; productivity also was higher among married agents those with children and those who were contraceptive users. Knowledge of midwifery was highly positively correlated with agent performance. Finally productivity tended to be higher in communities where the population exceeded 1000 and consequently where the eligible women/agent ratio was greater than 150/1.
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Azcona et al. (1980) studied this question.