Community Health Workers: Research, Education, and Advocacy. Experience of the field in the context of Community-based Participatory Research Projects

In recent years, community members have been increasingly recognized as powerful agents of access and change and important research partners. The use of Community Health Workers (CHW) and community members as research advisors and data collectors are just some of the roles reflecting this recognition, each with a specific scope of action. In the context of three Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) projects conducted by the Farmworker Association of Florida in collaboration with academic institutions, this paper focuses on the terminology and roles played by CHWs in the development, implementation, and evaluation of each project. The purpose is to clarify the expectations attached to these labels in the time frame of each project and highlight the challenges faced by academics, the community based organization, and the workers themselves while involved in a research-intervention partnership. The Farmworker Association of Florida is a statewide grassroots membership organization focus on building power among farmworkers and rural low-income communities of color and has embraced CBPR research as a means to increase members’ skills, access educational materials, and produce policy change. Current and former farmworkers have been community advisory members, recruiters, interviewers, focus group facilitators, promotores de salud, actors, writers, evaluators, and policy makers’ educators. How the institutions would define them and how they define themselves are a part of the discussion. How to develop, certify, and sustain community health workers while the different stages of the project are implemented are among the challenges discussed.