Community health workers for chronic disease prevention and control - the aim of this application will be to lay the groundwork and develop a plan for the implementation of a team of community…

Community health workers for chronic disease prevention and control - the aim of this application will be to lay the groundwork and develop a plan for the implementation of a team of community health workers to address chronic disease in johnson county. This project will include convening a leadership team of multi-sectoral partners who are passionate about addressing disparities in our community and who are committed to working collaboratively to pool assets and expertise to affect change in this way. This multidisciplinary team will then work, with guidance from the CDC and facilitation by jcph, to create an implementation plan to initiate a community health worker program within the county to address chronic disease in county populations disproportionately affected by barriers to their care and prevention efforts. In the development of this plan, the project leaders will address at least two of the determinants identified in the chronic disease framework developed by the CDC: community-clinical linkages and social connectedness. The primary focus of this opportunity is to achieve the short-term outcomes of: 1) convene and coordinate a leadership team of multi-sectoral partners and increase the collaboration 2) develop an implementation ready sdoh accelerator plan the catchment area will be johnson county, iowa and populations will be identified through demographics and knowledge of the community and community partners. Overall, the following milestones have been established to accomplish this project: - convene a workgroup of community agencies and community members - define the community health worker role and scope of practice, along with formal educational needs for the position - utilize social vulnerability index (SVI) data to examine and document existing community and systemic barriers that impact community clinical linkages and social connectedness - identify activities and opportunities where a community health worker may address these barriers - identify models of funding to support continuing implementation of a community health worker program - identify processes to sustain the leadership team - identify elements of infrastructure that will be required to support the ongoing efforts of the program - identify appropriate measures within the served populations in order to gauge a baseline of health status and enable the workgroup to adequately measure outcomes after implementation of the program - identify a pre-determined team of community providers who would be interested in developing a working relationship with the program to utilize its services