Strategies to Improve the Integration of Community Health Workers Into Health Care Teams: “A Little Fish in a Big Pond”

Details

• Journal Article:
  Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
• Personal Author:
  Allen, Caitlin G. ; Escoffery, Cam ; Satsangi, Anamika ; Brownstein, J. Nell
• Description:
  Introduction
  
  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act acknowledges the value of community health workers (CHWs) as frontline public health workers. Consequently, growing attention has been placed on promoting CHWs as legitimate partners to provide support to health care teams and patients in the prevention, management, and control of chronic disease, particularly among diverse populations and high-need individuals.
  
  Methods
  
  Using a mixed-methods research approach, we investigated the integration of CHWs into health care teams from the CHW perspective. We conducted a survey of 265 CHWs and interviews with 23 CHWs to better understand and describe their experience and their perceived opportunities and challenges regarding their integration within the context of health care reform.
  
  Results
  
  Feelings of organizational support were positively correlated with the number of CHWs in the organization. CHWs reported the following facilitators to integration: having team meetings (73.7%), training inside (70.4%) and outside of the organization (81.6%), access to electronic health records, and ability for CHWs to stay connected to the community.
  
  Conclusion
  
  The perspectives of CHWs on their positive and negative experiences offer useful and innovative insight into ways of maximizing their impact on the health care team, patients, and their role as key emissaries between clinical services and community resources.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Adult Chronic Disease Community Health Workers/psychology Cooperative Behavior Cross-Sectional Studies Delivery Of Health Care, Integrated Disease Management Educational Status Electronic Health Records Ethnicity/psychology Female Humans Interviews As Topic Male Patient Advocacy Patient Care Team Patient Education As Topic Professional Role Qualitative Research Quality Assurance, Health Care Social Support Surveys And Questionnaires Vulnerable Populations

  More +
• Source:
  Prev Chronic Dis. 12.
• DOI:
  http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd12.150199
• ISSN:
  1545-1151
• Pubmed ID:
  26378900
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC4576500
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Volume:
  12
• Collection(s):
  Preventing Chronic Disease
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c738a5735ace34239c55bbf5be3899290a88c5de6ff781f64fd7a2361f5ebc3d99571330343f91d9465b1d2c5e385fb06b842e45b83fe1dd318124884b00c215
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/34497/cdc_34497_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 311.64 KB ]