New and emerging roles for community health workers

New and Emerging Roles for Community Health Workers:

Community Health Workers (CHWs) play many roles in the communities they serve. A primary role is to act as a bridge or link between community members and health and social services. As technology advances, CHWs have an opportunity to expand this role into new avenues. This presentation will describe CHWs' role as a help desk advocate providing assistance to parents utilizing an online application to a state insurance program.

The Ohio Children's Buy in Program is a statewide program allowing families of children with medical handicaps with incomes over 300% of the federal poverty level to buy public health insurance on a sliding fee scale. Application to the program is made through an online process over a virtual private network system. CHWs staff a virtual “help desk” to assist families in navigating the application and to answer questions about the program. The CHW coaches and provides emotional support to the family in the application process. The personal sense of caring, compassion, and responsibility the CHW brings often humanizes what may otherwise be a cold and technological experience.

This presentation will describe how the inclusion of CHWs in developing help desk protocols and modeling the overall experience helps improve the process, and reports on consumer satisfaction with the CHW assisted model for online application to a statewide program.