Community Health Workers Are Important and Here to Stay!
Community Health Workers have never been so important, and allude to national projections of growth in healthcare sectors.
There aren’t many careers that one could identify as “angelic” but community health workers might fit the bill. Community health workers were traditionally attached to the healthcare system by nature of clinics and community health centers. Many are funded through Federal and State grants that mandate state’s to implement specific policies or programs, with community health workers employed through local organizations.
Community health workers are professionals who travel to people’s homes and help with things we might think are outside the scope of traditional healthcare. They meet with young mothers in low-income communities to help them learn how to breastfeed, or meet with elders and help them with setting up transport to appointment, or maybe even helping homeless people find a place to stay. Often community health workers are from the communities they serve, or from similar backgrounds and have had similar experiences to their patients. Their “magic” is that they look at all the factors contributing to someone’s health, and determine ways to connect them to other social services and programs to meet their needs. The power of health workers is that they are able to connect with people on a human level and actively listen to what they need. One community health worker reports that she starts all her conversations with new patients by asking them about themselves. It allows her to get to know people before trying to address any problems.
We’ve written about it and you’ve heard it, that many populations in low income communities, elders, Black and Hispanic communities, have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic. These disparities in “hard to reach” communities that would benefit immensely from personal touches like education about the vaccination process, building trust in the healthcare system, and simply finding access to necessary programs that offer support during the Pandemic, have highlighted the exact need for community health workers.
President Biden, in his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” calls for the hiring of 100,000 healthcare workers, to help with vaccine outreach and education that would be transitioned into community health roles when the pandemic is over. The recognition that community health workers are essential to outreach and quelling the effects of the pandemic is not only at a Federal level, states are hiring community health workers at a rapid rate. At the start of the pandemic community health workers were reaching out to their local Health Departments to pitch in, but were being denied access. A couple weeks/months later, they are being called for across the nation.
This trend of growth of community health workers follows the trend projected by the National Bureau of Labor Statistics that predicts exponential growth in the healthcare sector over the next decade. As the demographic of baby boomers reaches age 65 by 2029, there is going to be an increased demand for healthcare workers across a myriad of occupations including community health workers, home-health workers, visiting nurses, with 3.1 million jobs projected to be added in the healthcare and social assistance sector through 2029. (BLS, 2020) In the In the September 2020 Monthly Labor Review, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020) projected: of the 6.0 million jobs projected to be added to the economy, about half (3.1 million) are expected to be in the healthcare and social assistance sector. Employment increases in this sector will stem from greater demand for a variety of healthcare services as the population continues to age and rates of chronic disease continue to increase.
Community health workers have the ability to reach the areas where traditional healthcare does not go. They create opportunities for personal connection, and sometimes that’s all people really need. Community health workers actually reduce overall healthcare spending and spending on social services by connecting those most in need with essential life-saving services. By connecting people with services as preventative care, we can avoid unnecessary spending. Community health workers often reflect the communities they serve, building trust and reducing barriers to care. This will be essential as the nation aims to combat the racial disparities of the virus and vaccination. For many isolated elders, community health workers continue to provide essential interactions that keep people going until they can be vaccinated.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/article/pdf/projections-overview-and-highlights-2019-29.pdf