Community Health Worker Organizations Form Alliance
Sixteen health equity organizations have launched a national nonprofit alliance to help scale and leverage the skills of a community-based workforce to slow the pandemic and protect the hardest-hit communities.
The Community-Based Workforce Alliance was formed to connect pandemic response efforts to the existing community-based workforce, which includes community health workers, doulas, promotoras de salud, faith-based leaders, mutual aid groups, retirees, unemployed residents and students. As a key element of public health response efforts, the CBW Alliance said a community-based workforce can help prevent coronavirus spread, speed the reopening of schools and businesses, build meaningful employment opportunities and address the racial inequities that have left communities of color harder hit than others by the pandemic.
Among its principles are applying a racial equity lens to recruit contact tracers from highly impacted communities and paying a living wage. The organization also recommends including residents, trusted workers, and leaders in governance and advisory groups. The CBW Alliance also recommends using social vulnerability data and proven tools to identify household psychosocial needs among isolated and quarantined contacts and to connect them to community resources.
"Since January, U.S. leaders have missed an opportunity to deploy community-level strategies to support our frontline doctors and nurses and our overburdened public health departments," said Denise Octavia-Smith, executive director of the National Association of Community Health Workers, a member of the CBW Alliance, in a statement. "By investing in and swiftly integrating community health workers and others into the broader community-based workforce, we can ensure that COVID-19 pandemic response efforts are more equitable and effective."
CBW Alliance members include:
The National Association of Community Health Workers
HealthBegins
Community Health Acceleration Partnership
Health Leads
Families USA
Partners in Health
Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Last Mile Health
Penn Center for Community Health Workers
The UofSC Center for Community Health Alignment
Vision Y Compromiso
El Sol Neighborhood Educational Center
The Center for Health and Social Care Integration (Rush University Medical Center)
The Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at the George Washington University
The Rockefeller Foundation
The Camden Coalition
So far, the CBW Alliance has:
• Identified six core principles for engaging a community-based workforce in the pandemic response; • Highlighted examples of cities that have applied the principles such as Baltimore, Chicago and San Diego;
• Informed legislative efforts to combat the pandemic;
• Examined the impact of community-based workforces on increasing mental health challenges;
• Informed national and local strategies for equitable vaccine distribution;
• Developed tools and resources to support local health departments including a national Playbook for Community-Health Workers.
In the months ahead, the CBW Alliance will continue these efforts, advocate at federal and state level, and provide needed support to local health departments, community-based organizations and advocates on the ground who are fighting on the front lines of the pandemic.