Community Health Worker (CHW) Core
About the CHW Heading link
The CHW Core is jointly lead by the teams at the Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI) and UIC Office of Community Engagement and Neighborhood Health Partnerships (OCEAN-HP). During 2021, SUHI developed a COVID-19 training program and a CHW Core Skills program for CHWs. They started implementing these programs in English via zoom in December 2021. They were offered monthly, and Spanish classes were added in May 2022. By August 2022, 333 CHWs had participated in the trainings. At that point, the trainings were to prepare for the next phase. SUHI also offered access to their CHW learning collaborative for all CHWs participating in the trainings. SUHI conducted a survey of CHWs and CHW administrators (132 respondents) around the Chicago metro area to better understand COVID-19 needs for CHWs and used this information to modify and improve the training. OCEAN-HP supported the SUHI trainings and is building additional CHW capacity through the UIC OCEAN-HP CHW training and technical assistance center, CHW CONNECT.
SUHI also designed a train-the-trainer program for CHWs that is intended to build CHW capacity by training CHWs to be trainers of others, with a focus on COVID-19 issues. This will officially launch in December 2022. SUHI is preparing reports and a manuscript on these efforts and presented at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in November 2022.