Addressing Health Disparities in the Rural United States: Advocacy as Caregiving among Community Health Workers and Promotores de Salud
Rural populations in the United States are faced with a variety of health disparities that complicate access to care. Community health workers (CHWs) and their Spanish-speaking counterparts, promotores de salud, are well-equipped to address rural health access issues, provide education, and ultimately assuage these disparities. In this article, we compare community health workers in the […]
A Balanced Portfolio Model For Improving Health: Concept And Vermont’s Experience
A successful strategy for improving population health requires acting in several sectors by implementing a portfolio of interventions. The mix of interventions should be both tailored to meet the community’s needs and balanced in several dimensions – for example, time frame, level of risk, and target population. One obstacle is finding sustainable financing for both […]
Health Care Providers Are Hiring the Wrong People
In healthcare hiring there have long been strong prejudices about race, class and educational attainment. Many of our conventions come from an era when healthcare was delivered primarily by doctors and nurses with elite training whose success depended mostly on content expertise. This paradigm is outdated; we now know that social, behavioral and relational factors are […]
Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) position statement: SBM supports increased efforts to integrate community health workers into the patient-centered medical home
Integrating community health workers (CHWs) into health care systems has been associated with enhanced patient experience, improved population health, and reduced costs and unnecessary utilization of resources. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), care provided by CHWs is eligible for reimbursement. However, optimal integration of CHWs into health care requires purposeful implementation. This health policy […]
Establishing voluntary certification of community health workers in Arizona: a policy case study of building a unified workforce
In this article, we describe the process of unifying the two major CHW workforces in Arizona, promotoras de salud in US-Mexico border communities and community health representatives (CHRs) serving American Indian communities. Differences in the origins, financing, and even language of the population-served contributed to historically divergent interests between CHRs and promotoras. In order to […]
Community Health Workers and Social Proximity: Implementation of a Parenting Program in Urban Poverty
Community health workers (CHWs) offer a potential means through which to mitigate many of the barriers to mental health services faced by minority youth and their families. The primary aim of the present study was to better understand a core feature of CHWs: their shared community membership with the population served, or social proximity. We […]
Being a Community Health Worker Means Advocating: Participation, Perceptions, and Challenges in Advocacy
Community health workers (CHWs) participate in advocacy as a crucial means to empower clients in overcoming health disparities and to improve the health and social well-being of their communities. Building on previous studies, this article proposes a new framework for conceptualising CHW advocacy, depending on the intended impact level of CHW advocacy. CHWs participate in […]
Advancing Health Equity Through Community Health Workers and Peer Providers: Mounting Evidence and Policy Recommendations
This report reviews results from nine recent studies funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that provide further support for including community health workers (CHWs) and peer providers (PPs) as important components of health care delivery that are particularly effective in addressing health and health care inequities. These studies underscore the enormous value of […]
Building Capacity for Community Health Worker Integration: Three Key Steps State Policymakers Should Take during the COVID-19 Crisis and Beyond
This report focuses on three key implementation steps for integrating CHWs into Medicaid and other state programs: 1. defining the workforce, 2. creating pathways for sustainable financing, and 3. maximizing impact.
California Legislature Assembly Bill No. 316
Existing law requires the State Department of Health Services to review and survey the extent to which agricultural workers and their families utilize those public health programs for which they are eligible, including, but not limited to, the Medi-Cal program and the Healthy Families Program. This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to […]
