“Working in concert: A collaborative training approach to build cohesion between community health workers and emerging physicians”

Clinical Community Health Workers are integral members of several patient centered medical home models. These paraprofessionals complement the formal medical training of their colleagues by serving as cultural mediators and social navigators for patients. However, the CHW profession faces the ongoing challenge of establishing effective working relationships and interactions with credentialed healthcare professionals such as physicians who may not understand or have an appreciation for the expertise that CHWs bring to clinical care teams, or their contribution to population based healthcare delivery. Similarly, CHWs may not understand how to effectively communicate and engage physicians in order to appropriately advocate for patients. These barriers could result from the fact that doctors and community health workers rarely have the opportunity to interact during the training phases of their professional development. This presentation will discuss the development, implementation and impacts of the Community Health Worker Family Medicine Training Fellowship, a program designed to expose CHWs, 3rd year medical students and residents, to collaborative learning experiences that increase cohesion between their roles on clinical care teams. CHWs and emerging physicians participated in interactive sessions where they learned and applied active listening and other patient-centered communication strategies. Residents and medical students also shadowed the CHWs in various community settings. Findings from this program have implications for enhancing the capacity of community health workers to improve care in clinical settings and for training culturally competent physicians who can work in diverse clinical teams.