Community Health Workers: Building capacity to address diabetes in the Bangladeshi community in New York City

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are widely used to provide care for a broad range of health. However, there are few studies that document the efficacy of CHWs for managing diabetes in the Bangladeshi community, a rapidly growing immigrant population in the U.S. Few studies have enumerated the best practices for CHW service delivery in a new immigrant, limited English proficiency community. The DREAM Project is an NIH-funded culturally- and linguistically-appropriate CHW intervention to promoted diabetes control in the Bangladeshi community. DREAM CHWs were hired based on their experience as community organizers. To build the capacity of CHWs to address diabetes, an extensive 125-hour training curriculum was developed with guidance from members of community-academic coalition. The training including sessions on research, advocacy, clinical skills and disease management; and also included sessions specific to the concerns of new immigrant communities, such as immigration rights, language rights, and access to health care. The curriculum is intended to build on the CHWs existing strengths to carry out their roles in outreach and community organizing, case management, health education, and data collection. The DREAM Project CHWs will present how the training curriculum has been utilized to 1) build CHW capacity to address diabetes; 2) Build the capacity of Bangladeshi community members with limited English Proficiency; 3) Develop external and internal support mechanisms for CHWs to effectively carry out their roles; 4) explore the various roles CHWs play in health care delivery related to improving diabetes health outcomes, self-management skills, and patient education and counseling.