This is an updated study of Rhode Island’s Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce. The first qualitative study was released in January 2018, and this updated body of work was released in January 2021. Rather than attempting to revisit and update the original report, we wanted to build on it by exploring three sets of essential questions:
What has changed for the Rhode Island CHW field in the past few years? What lessons have we learned?
How is the pandemic affecting the CHW field in the state?What (if any) consensus is emerging about how to sustain the CHW workforce?
This report addresses these questions primarily through the perspective of employers and stakeholders in leadership positions, such as program directors and managers. Some interviewees were CHWs in these leadership positions, but the majority were not CHWs.
