Project Description Narrative:
Community Health Workers (CHWs) are frontline public health professionals. As trusted members of the communities they serve — through shared ethnicity, language, culture, and experience — CHWs are able to bridge gaps between underserved populations and health or social systems and also help build individual and community health knowledge and self-sufficiency through outreach, community organizing, informal counseling, social support, translation/interpretation and advocacy.
Despite growing numbers of CHW programs in Wisconsin, the state lags far behind other states in providing training and networking opportunities for these workers, which are essential to supporting the workforce needs of the state as well as the wellbeing of the workers themselves.
Through this award, project partners seek to establish a mechanism for cultivating training and networking opportunities for CHWs and their supporters throughout Wisconsin through the creation and development of a Wisconsin Community Health Worker Network.
Community partners: Milwaukee Area Health Education Center; Northeastern Wisconsin Area Health Education Center; Wisconsin Area Health Education Center, Statewide Program Office