Community Health Workers: Expanding the Scope of the Health Care Delivery System

Ensuring that underserved populations receive needed health care services is a challenge for policymakers. The changing landscape of the U.S. population, which is growing older and more diverse, coupled with other challenges—the increasing complexity of the health care system, rising health care costs, growing numbers of uninsured, more people with chronic diseases, and provider shortages—have […]

Community Health Workers in the Midwest: Understanding and developing the workforce Findings from a Study of Community Health Workers’ Role, Professional Development, and Cancer Information Needs Conducted for the American Cancer Society

Community Health Workers (CHWs) play a unique and valuable role in their communities, particularly in reducing health disparities by reaching underserved populations. To support efforts to build CHWs into a sustainable component of the health care system, the American Cancer Society – Midwest Division sought to increase understanding of and document the work of the […]

Promising Practices for Rural Community Health Worker Programs

This project identified six rural CHW models in the literature and in practice: promotora, member of the care delivery team, care coordinator, health educator, outreach and enrollment agent, and community organizer and capacity builder. The 330A Outreach Authority grantees offer promising strategies in the areas of program implementation, evaluation, and sustainability. An empowerment approach to […]

From Rhetoric to Reality-Community Health Workers in Post-Reform U.S. Health Care

Various policies and programs should accelerate the adoption and growth of U.S. CHW programs. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is supporting several demonstrations of care models that include CHWs. Numerous health care providers and Medicaid payers have developed internal financing strategies to support CHW-based interventions for high utilizers of care. On the basis […]

Program Planners’ Perspectives of Promotora Roles, Recruitment, and Selection

Objective—Program planners work with promotoras (the Spanish term for female community health workers) to reduce health disparities among underserved populations. Based on the Role-Outcomes Linkage Evaluation Model for Community Health Workers (ROLES) conceptual model, we explored how program planners conceptualized the promotora role and the approaches and strategies they used to recruit, select, and sustain […]

Medicaid Payment Innovations to Financially Sustain Comprehensive Childhood Asthma Management Programs at Federally Qualified Health Centers

Background. One in 7 children in the United States is diagnosed with asthma, the leading cause of chronic childhood disease. Although a manageable condition when recommended medication regimens are followed and environmental control measures implemented, asthma remains the third most common reason for hospitalization among non-newborn hospital stays. As the primary health care home to […]