NY State Community Health Worker Initiative forms working groups to recommend workforce financing and formalization strategies

The NYS Community Health Worker Initiative - a partnership between the CHW Network of NYC, the Community Health Worker Association of Rochester, Columbia University and the New York State Health Foundation, has released DRAFT recommendations for CHW scope of practice, training, credentialing and financing. These draft recommendations are the product of work conducted under the guidance and support of the project's Leadership Advisory Group made up of prominent New York leaders from the various CHW stakeholder sectors, including CHWs, heads of statewide professional associations, employers, funders, payers, regulators and elected officials.

CHWs and CHW advocates from networks in Rochester, Buffalo and NYC represented their constituencies on the Leadership Advisory Group. In addition to making up 25 percent of the Leadership Advisory Group membership, CHWs from the three regions also co-chaired the three working groups that developed these recommendations. 

The work groups developed draft recommendations in the following three areas.
1. CHW scope of practice
2. CHW training and credentialing
3. CHW financing

The scope of practice work group created three products to help guide the work of the other work groups. These include CHW Roles and Tasks, CHW Attributes and the actual recommendations.  In order to develop the CHW roles and tasks, the work group undertook a functional task analysis, which is a process used by labor segments to analyze and describe their workforce. Its sophistication provided a way to clearly articulate the differences between CHW roles and tasks and to identify the specific skills needed to accomplish those tasks. This sophisticated treatment of data generated from existing literature and from our own original scientific research on the CHW market also allowed us to identify a specific set of qualities associated with successful CHWs. These are attributes identified by both CHWs and their employers as essential personal qualities they look for when recruiting and hiring CHWs.

The Training/Credentialing work group made specific recommendations for CHW training content, training methods, training delivery and credentialing.

The Finance work group made recommendations for policy positions, demonstration initiatives and building the business case to the public, private and commercial sectors. In particular, this work group makes numerous recommendations for integration of CHWs in health reform innovations, including Medicaid redesign, Patient-centered Medical Homes, Health Homes, Accountable Care organizations and fee-for-performance demonstrations.

We hope to finalize these recommendations and present the final version to the Cuomo Administration and to the State of New York in the fall of 2011.  Anyone interested in these recommendations please visit our website or contact Sergio Matos at sergio@chwnetwork.org.