Training and Selecting Community Health Worker Candidates for a Home base Behavioral Intervention to reduce Diabetes Disparities

Community Health Workers are at the heart of efforts to reduce health disparities. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are over 45,000 CHWs employed in the US at present, many more have been recruited and trained over the past four decades. Despite this, in many parts of the country, projects seeking to hire CHWs must often develop their own curricula and determine standards for training and selection process.

The Multiclinic Action Trial to Control Hyperglycemia and Hypertension (MATCH2) is a behavioral clinical CBPR trial of a home based CHW intervention to reduce diabetes disparities. The recruitment and training protocol for the study was based on several prior studies of the Rush Center for Urban Health Equity.  64 candidates applied for training; six candidates had prior experience as CHWs.  From this group, investigators and community partners selected twenty candidates for training.   All twenty completed the 40-hour study training over a three week period.  The training used adult learning methods, with an emphasis on shared experience and role playing.  In addition to basic education about diabetes, hypertension, physical activity, and diet, modules emphasized training in social determinants of health and behavioral interventions.  The MATCH2 CHW toolkit includes stress management, problem solving, motivational interviewing, and chronic disease self-management.

In this presentation, including CHW presenters from the project, we will share the approaches used to train the CHWs in a complex behavioral intervention, and the evaluation tools for both formative feedback and final CHW selection.