•  Policy Evidence Assessment Report: Community Health Worker Policy Components pdf icon[PDF – 107 MB] 
•  Policy Evidence Assessment Report: Community Health Worker Policy (one-pager) pdf icon[PDF – 231 KB] 
•  What Evidence Supports State Laws to Establish Community Health Worker Scope of Practice and Certification? pdf icon[PDF – 486 KB] 
•  A Summary of State Community Health Worker Laws – 2016 pdf icon[PDF – 1 MB] 
•  508 compliant data for Table 2 excel icon[XLS – 16 KB] 
•  A Summary of State Community Health Worker Laws – 2013 pdf icon[PDF – 680 KB] 

Prevention Strategies

• The Community Guide: Community Health Workersexternal icon
• Best Practices Guide for CVD Prevention: Community Health Workers
• Community Health Worker (CHW) Toolkit
• National Conference on State Legislators Report: Incorporating Community Health Workers into State Health Care Systems: Options for Policymakers pdf icon[PDF – 3.75 MB]external icon
• Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistance Secretary for Planning and Evaluation: Community Health Workers: Roles and Opportunities in Health Care Delivery System Reform pdf iconexternal icon

More recourses

• Connecticut Health Foundation Infographic: A day in the life of a community health workerexternal icon
• Science-in-Brief: Do State Community Health Worker Laws Align with Best Available Evidence?  pdf icon[PDF – 352 KB]
• CDC/Network for Public Health Law webinar: Advancing the Community Health Worker Workforce through Law and Policyexternal icon

Addressing Chronic Disease through Community Health Workers 

- A Policy and Systems Approach 

2nd Edition

Pages: 27

Date: April 2015

Authors: CDC Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention

• Cancer
• Asthma
• Diabetes
• Hypertension

General Roles (p 4)

•  Bridging cultural mediation between communities and the health care system
• Providing culturally appropriate and accessible health education and information, often by using popular education methods.
• Ensuring that people get the services they need.
• Providing informal counseling and social support. 
• Advocating for individuals and communities. 
• Providing direct services (such as basic first aid) and administering health screening tests. 
• Building individual and community capacity

Chronic Disease Specific Roles (p 4)

• Providing outreach to individuals in the community setting. 
• Measuring and monitoring blood pressure. 
• Educating patients and their families on the importance of lifestyle changes and on adherence to their medication regimens and recommended treatments, and finding ways to increase compliance with medications. 
• Helping patients navigate health care systems (e.g., by providing assistance with enrollment, appointments, referrals, and transportation to and from appointments; promoting continuity of health services; arranging for child care or rides and arranging for bilingual providers or translators). 
• Providing social support by listening to the concerns of patients and their family members and helping them solve problems. 
• Creating community-clinical linkages to help create a team based approach through supporting and enhancing the work of healthcare team. 
• Assessing how well a self-management plan is helping patients to meet their goals. 
• Supporting patient self-management plans and long term self-management support. 
• Supporting work of the chronic care team and increasing the team’s cultural competence when serving as an integrated member of a health care team. • Supporting individualized goal-setting.46-48 
• Playing a role in self-management program administration by leading or supporting self-management programs. More recent literature confirms these roles.  

Download:  https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/docs/chw_brief.pdf

 Subjects Taught
(Note: Participants make weekly action plans, share experiences, and help each other solve problems they encounter in creating and carrying out their self-management program. Physicians and other health professionals both at Stanford and in the community have reviewed all materials in the workshop.)

• Techniques to deal with problems such as frustration, fatigue, pain and isolation.
• Appropriate exercise for maintaining and improving strength, flexibility, and endurance
• Appropriate use of medications
• Communicating effectively with family, friends, and health professionals
• Nutrition
• Decision making
• How to evaluate new treatments

Leaders

• Two trained leaders, one or both of whom are non-health professionals with chronic diseases themselves.
• Must be trained by certified Master Trainers, or must be Master Trainers themselves.
• For information about attending a Master Trainer training, please visit our Training section.

Materials

• Living a Healthy Life With Chronic Conditions  
• Audio relaxation CD, Relaxation for Mind and Body

Language Options:  Tomando Control de su Salud
CDSMP Leader's Manual translations available:Chinese 2012 , Creole (Haitian) 2012, Danish 2012, Finnish 2012 ,Hmong 2012, Arabic 2012 Japanese 2012, Samoan 2012 ,Tongan 2012, Vietnamese 2012 , Hindi 2012
Outcomes  Subjects who took the Program, when compared to those who did not, demonstrated significant improvements in exercise, cognitive symptom management, communication with physicians, self-reported general health, health distress, fatigue, disability, and social/role activities limitations. They also spent fewer days in the hospital, and there was also a trend toward fewer outpatients visits and hospitalizations. These data yield a cost to savings ratio of approximately 1:4. Many of these results persist for as long as three years.*** Studies by others have reported similar results
Contact:  information: smrc@selfmanagementresource.com  

Learn how Health Leads trained and funded CHWs to help solve a barrier to treatment involving the electric utility company and a people  with asthma.

Video: https://vimeo.com/297321245