Strengthening the Community Health Worker Ecosystem in Texas.
Project Overview
The Health Equity Collective serves as a convener of leaders across the region’s Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce development efforts. Since 2022, employers, training centers, CHW allies, and CHW leaders have come together to collaborate on opportunities for improving CHW workforce sustainability and health equity through policy and systems changes.
Project Details:
The Health Equity Collective (HEC), a multi-sector systems-level collective impact coalition in the Greater Houston region, partnered with the City of Houston Health Department (HHD) to launch a 2-year effort to implement a comprehensive approach towards strengthening the Community Health Workers (CHW) workforce infrastructure as a pathway to advancing equity. This included promoting parity in living wages, providing a career pipeline for further advancement, recruiting from ethnically/racially diverse communities, full-time employment opportunities with benefits, etc.
In the fall of 2022, the Health Equity Collective brought together a Network of CHW-employing or training organizations in the Greater Houston region. This Network was the working group tasked with developing the shared agenda for collaborative action toward strengthening the regional CHW workforce.
A baseline needs assessment of the CHW landscape was conducted. Qualitative interviews were conducted to understand the role and add-value of CHWs in advancing health equity. A landscape scan survey was administered to assess CHW employer organization’s funding and sustainability mechanisms for their CHWs job stability, CHW focus areas, organizational health equity priorities, etc. Additionally, a journey mapping exercise was conducted to capture CHWs' lived experiences in their own voices.
Project Contact: Rosalia Guerrero, MBA, CHWI
Project Team
Shreela Sharma, PhD, RDN, LD
Co-Lead, Health Equity Collective
Director, Center for Health Equity
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Epidemiology
Heidi Hagen McPherson, MPH
Co-Lead, Health Equity Collective
Rosalia Guerrero, MBA, CHWI
Manager, Community Health Worker Training Program
Jemima John, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology
Sisan Tennyson, MPH
Research Coordinator, Department of Epidemiology