WHAT DOES A COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER DO?
Updated: Jan 06, 2025 - The Community Health Worker provides community outreach and virtual efforts to share essential health information and resources, ensuring accurate translation and effective communication. This role involves supporting individuals and families by linking them to necessary care and services while offering education on health topics like flu prevention and immunizations. The worker also complies with confidentiality protocols, gathers relevant client information, and collaborates on service planning and progress reporting to address psychosocial barriers.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Community Health Worker
1. Community Health Worker Details and Accountabilities
- Home Visits: Regularly visit clients in their homes during their pregnancy and up to two years postpartum.
- Pregnancy Education: Educate about premature labor warning signs, the benefits of breastfeeding, and other pregnancy-related issues.
- Prenatal Advocacy: Advocate for early and continuous prenatal care.
- Family Planning: Provide basic family planning education and administer pregnancy tests.
- Child Development: Educate about developmental milestones for infants/children and encourage positive parenting skills.
- Preventative Health: Promote childhood immunizations, adequate nutrition, and other preventative health care issues for children.
- Car Seat Safety: Educate and advocate for proper car seat use and installation.
- Education Enrollment: Encourage enrollment in early childhood education programs.
- Resource Assistance: Educate, refer, and assist clients with applications and enrollment in community resources.
- Community Knowledge: Possess basic knowledge of the community and its population.
- Cultural Support: Reinforce and support traditional cultural practices and beliefs.
- Role Modeling: Serve as a positive role model for pregnant women and mothers in the community.
- Self-Motivation: Be a proactive, self-motivated Family Health Advocate who enjoys working with people.
- Training: Complete the training course and attend regular in-service programs.
2. Community Health Worker Job Description
- Outreach: Provide in-reach and/or outreach to MediCal beneficiaries who have complex physical and behavioral health issues to support them to improve their health including linking them to various services.
- Participant Engagement: Connect and engage participants in activities and services.
- Relationship Building: Build and maintain trusting and open relationships with community organizations, leaders, and resources.
- Assessment: Conduct an initial assessment of participant strengths and needs including administering appropriate screening and/or assessment tools.
- Service Planning: Guide participants, participants’ significant others, and other team members in the development of a services and support plan.
- Goal Setting: Assist participants in setting goals related to housing, benefits establishment, employment, and self-sufficiency, and other topics.
- Support: Support the program participant in gaining more control over their lives and their health.
- Progress Evaluation: In conjunction with other team members and each participant, assist with evaluating progress toward goals.
- Case Management: Make adjustments in the case management plan to facilitate progress toward goals.
- Eligibility Assessment: Assess participant eligibility/suitability for special programs.
- Documentation: Complete all necessary and required documentation, which includes the use of the WPC IT Care Management Platform, known as CHAMP.
- Data Reporting: Compile and report summary program data at regular intervals as directed by their Supervisor and per Regional Team needs.
- Confidentiality: Maintain participant confidentiality and privacy by protecting participant health information.
- Trust Building: Establish a trusting and open relationship with participants.
3. Community Health Worker Responsibilities
- Appointment Accompaniment: Accompany participants to appointments and help participants to build social support systems including connecting participants to support and recovery groups.
- Coaching: Provide coaching for housing, employment, and other interviews and address participants’ anxieties related to these activities.
- Case Management: Provide intensive case management for a determined period.
- Warm Hand-offs: Provide warm hand-offs and supported referrals to necessary supports and services, including housing, education, employment, substance use treatment, etc.
- Engagement: Engage with participants in the most appropriate and accessible location, which may include the street, participants’ homes, the hospital, or other community sites.
- Resource Connection: Connect participants to needed resources within the Departments of Health Services, Mental Health and Public Health, and other health and social service providers.
- Transportation Support: Arrange or provide transportation to services and assist with discharge planning.
- Application Assistance: Assist with obtaining, completing, and submitting applications, and appeals processes.
- Appointment Support: Support participants to prepare for and complete needed medical and social service appointments.
- Primary Care Connection: Facilitate connection to and engagement with a geographically and culturally appropriate primary care home.
- Residential Placement: Assist other members of the health and social service team in identifying and securing appropriate community-based residential placements such as board and care, skilled nursing, substance use treatment, or mental health treatment facilities for participants.
- Supportive Services Arrangement: Arrange for supportive services such as home health care, in-home supportive services, or durable medical equipment.
- Homelessness Support: Link participants experiencing homelessness to the Coordinated Entry System (CES).
4. Community Health Worker Details
- Support Transition: Assist participants in making a solid connection to another source of support before the termination of WPC services.
- Cultural Communication: Communicate information about the health and social service systems, including medication regimes and system processes, in a culturally appropriate manner.
- Follow-up: Continue to follow up with participants to encourage engagement and ongoing participation in and commitment to the program.
- Team Collaboration: Build trusting relationships and collaborate with other members of the team who may include social workers, nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, Medical Case Workers, service providers, etc.
- Cultural Education: Educate and inform other health and social service professionals about strengths and needs, as well as cultural worldviews, experiences, and perspectives of the community or communities in which the CHW lives and works.
- System Adaptation: Work with other team members, especially at a regional level, to adapt systems and services to be more culturally centered and appropriate.
- Meeting Participation: Participate in all program meetings, site-specific staff meetings, and team huddles as directed by the Supervisor.
- Professional Representation: Respectfully and professionally represent the Whole Person Care Program.
- Advocacy: Serve as an advocate on behalf of the participant within clinical and community-based settings to help participants achieve health and life goals.
- Service Coordination: Secure necessary services and support, promoting the participant’s recovery.
- Self-Advocacy Training: Assist the participants in learning to advocate for themselves.
- Motivational Interviewing: Use motivational interviewing and popular education to motivate and activate the participant to set and achieve personal goals.
- Recovery Support: Move participants forward in their recovery and reduce the number of days spent in high-acuity facilities and treatment.
- Program Connection: Provide connection to appropriate programs, including both social service programs and organizations that conduct community building and organizing.
- Empowerment: Facilitate empowerment, self-determination, and engagement in the community.
5. Community Health Worker Duties
- Community Outreach: Work with community members to ensure that accurate and up-to-date DPH materials are shared.
- Virtual Outreach: Utilize both in-person (where possible to do so safely) and virtual outreach efforts to reach highly impacted communities with information about testing, contact tracing, quarantine/isolation, and other resources.
- Care Linkage: Support System Navigators with linkage to care and support services for individuals and families impacted.
- Translation Review: Provide a secondary review of DPH-translated materials to ensure the accuracy and appropriateness of translations.
- Education and Outreach: Include complementary education and outreach (e.g., flu prevention and immunizations).
- Small Business Support: Visit small business owners and provide updated guidance that may impact them.
- Confidentiality Compliance: Comply with DPH training regarding confidential information related to personal information.
- Direct Services: Provides direct services using education, advocacy, and services coordination to individuals to extend psychosocial support services.
- Information Gathering: Gathers information related to individual and family, financial, health, and emotional status.
- Service Planning: Develop a plan for addressing psychosocial barriers to the health and well-being of clients to develop a client-directed Service Plan.
- Education and Support: Provides education and psychosocial support on issues such as health, medical compliance, budgeting, safety, parenting, and community resources according to assessed needs and resulting plan.
- Progress Communication: Communicate regularly with Alivio Medical Center Health Education Programs Manager on progress and barriers to effective services.
- Additional Duties: Performing other duties as assigned by the Medical Center Health Education Programs Manager.
- Event Participation: Participate in the Medical Center's major outreach and in-reach events.