Citation

Komaromy M, Ceballos V, Zurawski A, Bodenheimer T, Thom DH, Arora S. J. Public Health Policy 2018; 39(2): 203-216.

Affiliation

ECHO Institute, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group -- Palgrave-Macmillan)

DOI

10.1057/s41271-017-0114-8

PMID

29263437

Abstract

More than 50,000 community health workers (CHWs) are employed in the United States (US), a country with no national accreditation or certification program. In the US, CHWs are trained, formally and/or on-the-job, and rarely is long-term mentoring included. We developed a CHW training program using the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model™, distance education using video teleconferencing to support case-based learning, and mentoring of healthcare providers from medically underserved communities. We describe the ECHO model for CHW training and mentoring using case examples and pre/post-surveys from our obesity prevention and addiction recovery programs. Using the ECHO model to train and support CHWs offers advantages over traditional training methods, and can be adapted in other countries to support CHWs to improve health in their communities.

Language: en

Keywords

Addiction recovery; Community health worker; Distance education; ECHO model; Obesity prevention