Community health workers: integral members of the health care work force.
Abstract
As the US health care system strives to function efficiently, encourage preventive and primary care, improve quality, and overcome nonfinancial barriers to care, the potential exists for community health workers to further these goals. Community health workers can increase access to care and facilitate appropriate use of health resources by providing outreach and cultural linkages between communities and delivery systems; reduce costs by providing health education, screening, detection, and basic emergency care; and improve quality by contributing to patient-provider communication, continuity of care, and consumer protection. Information sharing, program support, program evaluation, and continuing education are needed to expand the use of community health workers and better integrate them into the health care delivery system.
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Non-specialist health workers are typically embedded in the same communities as their patients and are therefore well positioned to tailor treatments to patients' culture and explanatory models.
“In contrast to specialist mental health clinicians, non-specialist health workers are typically embedded within the same communities as the patients they treat, and are therefore ideally situated to tailor treatments to the culture and explanatory models of illness of their patients.43,44”
From Digital Technology for Building Capacity of Nonspecialist Health Workers for Task Sharing and Scaling Up Mental Health Care Globally (2019) · cites this paper as [43]
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Perry, H. B., Zulliger, R., & Rogers, M. M. (2014) · Annual Review of Public Health · doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182354 · Cited by 944 · see citing works
Lay health workers in primary and community health care
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Community Health Workers: Who they are and What they do
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- Authors
- Witmer, A., Seifer, S. D., Finocchio, L., Leslie, J., & O'Neil, E. H.
- Affiliations
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- Venue
- American Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- American Public Health Association
- Published
- 1995-08
- Volume
- 85
- Issue
- 8_Pt_1
- Pages
- 1055-1058
- ISSN
- 0090-0036 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0048
- OpenAlex
- W2003148651
- Cited by
- 574
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 48 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 39
- FWCI
- 13.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Journal of Public Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (T32-HS00044)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Community Health and Development
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Public Health Policies and Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Nursing Roles and Practices
- Keywords
- community health workers, healthcare workers, health care access, preventive medicine, primary care, health education, screening, patient-provider communication, continuity of care, health care costs
- MeSH terms
- Community Health Workers, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Training Support, United States
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