296570
California Community Health Workers: Balancing Regional Diversity with Professional Unity
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has for the first time introduced the potential for sustainable funding for Community Health Worker (CHW) Programs and has sparked an interest in the Community Health Worker workforce’s potential to address the triple aim of increasing access, reducing costs and increasing quality of care.
Questions of CHW scope of practice, training standards and certification requirements are uppermost in the minds of policy makers, insurance companies and employers as they look for ways to integrate CHW into health teams and grow the size of the CHW workforce to help meet ACA driven increased demand for services.
The length of California from Mexico to Oregon is nearly 1,287 kilometers (800 miles) 15 hours by car on interstate 5 without traffic and divided into 58 demographically diverse counties. Community Health Workers are trusted members of the communities they serve and thus reflect the diversity of the populations they live and work in. It is not surprising then that in California CHW have more than a 100 different job titles and speak more than 200 languages.
Despite these challenges it is essential for the diverse CHW workforce to come together as a unified professional advocacy voice because as the saying goes…”If Community Health Workers are not at the discussion table we will be what is for lunch!”
Learning Areas:
Communication and informaticsDiversity and culture
Provision of health care to the public
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
List three significant developments in California that have contributed to the increased interest and recognition of the role of the CHW.
Identify five important factors affecting regional diversity of CHWs in California.
List five geographical challenges to unifying CHWs in California.
Name three state level resources working to support the professional development of CHW's in California.
Explain why immigration reform is essential to the professional unity of the diverse CHW workforce in California.
Keyword(s): Community-Based Partnership & Collaboration, Affordable Care Act
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a certified Community Health Worker living and working in California. I am currently an APHA CHW section councilor. As the founding member of the CHW Initiative of Sonoma County I have been actively involved in policy support of Community Health Workers for the past five years. I am in communication with CA4Health, California Health Workforce Alliance, member of Vision y Compromiso and CAPHA-N
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.