Community Health
​Publications

Rural Community Health Toolkit

This toolkit provides rural communities with the information, resources, and materials they need to develop a community health program in a rural community.

Rural Community Health Worker Programs: Proving Value and Finding Sustainability

For decades, community health workers (CHWs) provided their services outside usual healthcare reimbursement models. In recent years, with research supporting CHWs as professionals effectively assisting patients with navigating health-related social determinants, federal and private payers are exploring reimbursement mechanisms. Four rural healthcare organizations share both the impact and the continued sustainability challenges and successes of their CHW programs.

TOOLKIT: Public Health Departments Contracting with Community-based Organizations to Implement Community Health Worker Programs

This toolkit, developed by the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) in partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), will provide tips for hiring, training, and building CHW career pathways through your contract.

Community Health Workers: Evidence
of Their Effectiveness

Community health workers (CHWs) are critical to improving individual and community health through their ability to build trust and relationships and deepen communication between patients and providers. CHWs have a deep understanding of their communities through lived experience, which makes them uniquely qualified to address social and behavioral determinants of health.

​The Role of State and Territorial Health Agencies in Supporting and Hiring Community Health Workers

​As communities across the United States continue to face barriers to accessing care—whether due to geographic constraints, an overburdened clinical workforce, or social and economic barriers—community health workers (CHWs) can establish trusting relationships and create bridges that help clients navigate and access services. CHWs can also facilitate the identification of community needs and improve community capacity to self-advocate within the service delivery system.

Community Health Workers

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Hiring Practices That Support State Integration of Community Health Workers

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NACHW partnered with the 
Community-Based Workforce Alliance to create a playbook 
focused on Advancing CHW Engagement in COVID-19 Response Strategies. While this playbook was specifically designed for local health departments that wanted to increase engagement 
of CHWs within their COVID-19 Response Strategies, this 
resource provides a valuable basis of knowledge for state and territorial health agencies 
wishing to integrate CHWs into their workforce throughout the 
COVID-19 response and beyond. 

Iowa Chronic Care Consortium Presents ​Community Health Workers: Iowa Success Stories

​​Over the course of the last three years, ICCC has invited Community Health Workers(CHWs) participating in the CHW Professional Skills course to share success stories -examples of situations the CHW assisted with that they felt especially good about or learned something important from. To date, 45 stories have been received. While each story is fascinating to read, they have been summarized and excerpted for brevity. This document highlights the information collected from these examples of CHW success in Iowa.

​Community Health Workers (CHWs)

A community health worker is a frontline public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served. This trusting relationship enables the worker to serve as a liaison/link/intermediary between health/social services and the community to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery.