Building and Sustaining a Health Care Workforce: Community Health Workers

COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the face of the health care workforce. The pandemic has strained hospitals, affecting caregivers’ well-being and resulting in many leaving their hospital jobs. The AHA has been collecting resources to assist organizations in their efforts to plan for the future post-COVID-19 workforce.

Community health workers (CHW) are community members who work in the community setting and serve as connectors between health care providers and consumers to promote health among groups that have traditionally been underserved. CHWs provide support and health education that is needed for individuals to successfully modify behaviors, increase engagement in their treatment plan development and increase the likelihood of improved health outcomes. Despite the many positive contributions CHWs bring to delivering high quality care, they experience significant barriers to becoming integrated members of the clinical care team. This set of resources will help to guide institutions toward building a CHW program to strengthen and sustain their health care workforce.