Community Health Worker Training
Community Health Worker Training
Elevating the Multidimensional Skillset
The Community Health Worker (CHW) Certification will emphasize on the integration of Community Health Worker in the community setting. The program will include hands-on practice (experiential learning), group activities, demonstrations, role-playing, case studies, and simulations.
What is a Community Health Worker?
A community health worker is a front-line public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served. This trusting relationship enables the worker to serve as a liaison/link/intermediary between health/social services and the community to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery.
-American Public Health Association.
CHW is an Empowering The Masses term that encompasses a wide variety of job descriptions. CHWs often work under different titles, such as navigator, outreach worker, care coordinator, peer support worker, etc.
The settings in which CHWs can work is as diverse as their job titles. They are employed in hospitals, clinics, public health agencies, community-based organizations, and more.
Growing evidence supports the CHWs’ effectiveness in improving health outcomes such as medication adherence, quality of life, disease self-management, and lowering health care costs.
What does a Community Health Worker Do?
CHWs improve individual and community health and access to care. They forge connections where people live, learn, work, play, pray, and age, from the inner city to rural communities.
CHWs work in 10 roles and across 11 competencies to provide wraparound services and supports to patients.
CHWs help to address the root of the issues that patients face while also helping to free up valuable time of the clinical care team. CHWs can assist with issues that keep your patients from addressing their health. The are perfectly positioned to address the Social Determinants of Health.
As trusted resources in their communities, CHWs can be instrumental in combatting misinformation, relaying public health messages, and ensuring patients are connected with services.
By addressing the patients’ immediate, urgent needs, your patients are better able to focus and address their own personal healthcare issues.
CHW Continuing Education
Continuing Education is offered through EmpoweringTheMasses.org > Services, a virtual school for Community Health Workers, Community Health Worker Instructors, and other front-line health professionals. Visit Empowering The Masses and browse our current services of available continuing education offerings. Empowering The Masses is a Texas Department of State of Health Services approved provider of Continuing Education.
Benefits of Community Health Workers
Community Health Workers are important components of health care delivery because they are particularly effective in addressing health and health care inequities.
A report from the Center on Health Equity Action at Families USA reviews results from 9 recent studies that provide further support for including community health workers. These studies underscore the enormous value of CHWs who are often overlooked and underutilized.
CHWs are powerful agents of change and integrating them into your clinical setting can improve care delivery, improve health outcomes, reduce utilization and generate cost-savings for your organization.
