Community Health Worker Certifi

With the growing utilization of community health workers (CHWs) in the U.S. has come a growing interest on the part of selected access-to-health programs, state legislatures, and federal agencies to standardize their training and qualification by creating formal requirements for licensing, certification, or "credentialing". The Texas Legislature in 1999, passed HB 1864 mandating the formation of a committee charged with: (1) reviewing and assessing promotora programs currently in operation around the state; (2) studying the feasibility of establishing a standardized curriculum for promotoras; (3) studying the options for certification of promotoras and the settings in which certification may be appropriate. Legislation also raises the question as to how many other states either already have state-mandated requirements that standardize the training and certification of CHWs. Certification is one form of formalizing CHWs' work, but perhaps programs and states around the U.S. have instituted less standardized, but none-the-less formal, means of preparing and monitoring CHWs. Therefore a multilayered, multi-state study that will provide for the first time a comprehensive description of the types of standardization that are occurring with CHWs, where it is occurring, and an analysis of how and why it is occurring. This study will provide new knowledge on the nature, diversity and design of formalization of the work of CHWs. Moreover the conceptualization and implementation of this study builds on the research findings of a study of Promotora organizations just completed.

May, M., Kash, B., and Contreras, R. (May 2005). Community Health Worker (CHW) Certification and Training: A National Survey of Regionally and State-Based Programs. Final report to the Office of Rural Health Policy. College Station, TX: The Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, Southwest Rural Health Research Center. REQUEST A COPY