Policy Brief

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are a frontline public health workforce, whose trust and skill to address health inequities among diverse, historically oppressed, and marginalized populations has been researched and found effective over the last 60 years. Yet, the CHW workforce remains a precarious workforce. With funding from Johnson & Johnson’s Our Race to Health Equity Initiative, the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) collaborated with CHW leaders from across the country to implement the Advance CHW Project. The project surveyed 867 CHW respondents, a majority of whom report structural inequities in compensation and career advancement, as well as identify barriers to funding, capacity building, and partnerships.

The NACHW believes that to actualize and sustain CHWs roles to address health inequities, public and private institutions must address the structural inequities that work against sustainability for CHWs by supporting authentic identity, compensated positions, organizational leadership, and funding. NACHW is enacting a multi-year strategy with our members and partners to disseminate and leverage this national CHW data to advocate for CHW respect, protection, and authentic partnership within federal, state and employer policies.