Boston Community Health Worker Initiative: CHW leadership drives a new comprehensive career advancement model

CHWs have played a key role in creating the Boston Community Health Worker Initiative (BCHWI), a unique workforce development model combining prior learning credit, education, training and advocacy for CHWs. A early, unanimous decision that CHWs co-chair all sub-committees led to strong CHW leadership. Their input was crucial to the model's development. It includes career coaching, where CHWs develop their own career plan, a certificate training program delivering skill training around key CHW core competencies and community health-specific degrees at two community colleges and a state university. However, as CHWs have long known, gaining a degree does not automatically confer higher pay. BCHWI, led by partnering organization Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers, is championing policies supporting CHW advancement, both at the individual employer level through career ladders and at the broader funding and administrative levels. CHW leaders convinced other stakeholders the model had to develop a range of inter-related components for CHWs to truly advance their careers, rather than focus solely on single but important elements of CHW advancement, such as a skills training program. While this leads to some trade-offs in programmatic depth, CHWs elsewhere should consider how implementing similar models could promote wage increases and career advancement in their own states. BCHWI is supported by SkillWorks, a workforce development funder emphasizing employee, employer and advocate involvement. BCHWI consists of 28 partnering organizations, representing community and public health, workforce development, education, training and policy fields. Twelve CHW employers provide a key perspective, often through their CHWs.