Reports & Publications

Community Health Worker Roles and Scope of Practice

CHWs in the United States have a well-defined set of roles and scope of practice. These roles have been defined by CHWs in studies spanning more than 20 years.

Oregon Community Health Workers Association, Oregon Health Equity Alliance, Urban League of Portland, IRCO-Africa House, The Coalition of Community Health Clinics, Oregon Health Authority & Office of Equity and Inclusion. Oregon Community Health Workers (CHWs) Guide

Rosenthal, Menking, and St. John. Together Leaning Towards the Sky: 2018 Final Report of the Community Health Worker Core Consensus Project

Oregon Traditional Health Worker Commission. CHW Scope of Practice

Wiggins and Borbón. Chapter 3: Core Roles and Competencies of Community Health Workers (from the 1998 Natl. Community Health Advisor Study)

Best and Promising Practice Guides and Reports

A variety of guides to best and promising practices in the CHW field have been developed. Some address the field as a whole, while others address particular aspects of the CHW field, such as integration into health services. A sampling of the best reports is found below.

Oregon Community Health Workers Association Best and Promising Practices: Integration of Community Health Workers into Clinical Settings

Oregon Community Health Workers Association Guide for Community Based Organizations: Recruiting, Hiring, Training, and Retaining Community Health Workers

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Best Practices for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Programs. Domain 4: Community-Clinical Links. Community Health Workers

Unicef/USAID. Community Health Worker Assessment and Improvement Matrix (CHW AIM). Updated Program Functionality Matrix for Optimizing Community Health Programs

University of Arizona Prevention Research Center. Best Practices for Clinical Integration of Community Health Workers

Outcomes of CHW Programs

There is now more than 60 years of scientifically credible evidence about the effectiveness of CHW interventions and the conditions that promote their success. A few notable reports are available at the links below.

Families USA. Blueprint for Health Care Advocacy: How Community Health Workers Are Driving Health Equity and Value in New Mexico

Families USA. Community Health Workers: Key partners in Improving Children’s Health and Improving Inequities

Community Health Worker Common Indicator Project

Evaluation of the CHW field has been hindered by the lack of common process and outcome measures that can be combined at the national level. Lack of data about CHW processes and outcomes has, in turn, impeded development of sustainable funding sources. For this reason, in 2014, CHW leaders and researchers founded the CHW Common Indicators Project. The goal of the project is to strengthen the science around CHW programs by promoting identification and uptake of common process and outcome measures for CHW program evaluation.

Kieffer et al. 2015 Summit Executive Summary

CI Project One-Pager

Sustainable Funding Models

Since CHWs were highlighted in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), increasing attention has been given to how to sustainably fund CHWs as integral members of the health and health care systems. A few notable reports are available at the links below.

ORCHWA Community Health Worker Payment Model Guide

Connecticut Health Foundation. Sustainable Financing Models for Community Health Worker Services in Connecticut: Translating Science into Practice

Families USA. How States Can Fund Community Health Workers through Medicaid to Improve People’s Health, Decrease Costs, and Reduce Disparities

Families USA. Community Health Workers in Payment and Delivery Transformation: How New Delivery and Payment Models Can Incentivize and Support the Use of CHWs

Community Education Workers

Community Education Workers (CEWs) are Community Health Workers who participate in additional training in early childhood growth and development, so that they can address inequities in early childhood education and promote educational success. The CEW Program based at ORCHWA has been in existence since 2015. It is currently funded by Early Learning Multnomah and a variety of other funders. 

Wiggins, Castro, and Kuzma. Community Changemakers in Early Childhood Education: Pilot Training Evaluation Final Report

Wiggins and Vance. Year 1 Final Evaluation Report and Infographic

Rodriguez-Garcia, Wiggins and Vance. 2017 Final Evaluation Report

Wiggins, Parajón, Coombe, Duldulao, Rodriguez-Garcia, & Wang. Participatory evaluation as a process of empowerment: Experiences with Community Health Workers in the US and Latin America

Oregon and ORCHWA Specific Materials

Third-Party Billing for CHW: Perspectives from Community-Based Organizations in Lane County, Oregon Executive Summary (2023)

Overview of Payment Models to Pay for CHW Services connected to health systems/CCOs (2022) 

Coming Together to Address Coronavirus/COVID-19 and Care For Each Other (2020)

ORCHWA CHW Statewide Needs Assessment Report (2018)

ORCHWA CHW Statewide Needs Assessment Report Summary (2018)

Warriors of Wellness: A Multicultural Community Health Workers Collaborative. Executive Summary  (2016)