Projects and Partners
Project Title
State-of-the art Training Methodologies and Curriculum Development for Building Competences and Skills for Community Health Workers: A Pilot Initiative with Cedars-Sinai and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science {CDU}
Funded by Cedars Sinai Medical Center, a nonprofit academic health care organization serving the diverse Los Angeles community and beyond.
Project Summary
The CDU CHW Academy was initiated with this funding from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to develop our Community Health Worker Core Curricula. With pioneering medical research achievements, education programs defining the future of health care, and wide-ranging community benefit activities, Cedars Sinai and CDU, together are setting new standards for quality and innovation in patient care.
Project Title
CHW Training and Internships in Clinical Settings
Funded by California Community Reinvestment Grants Program (CalCRG) in partnership with Providence Health Services, an organization with a longstanding involvement with under-resourced communities.
Project Summary
Providence has utilized Community Health Workers (CHWs) for more than a decade to enrich their health care programs. However, most Providence CHWs have not benefitted from any formal training. The CDU CHW Academy and Providence’s Community Health Department are working together to address this gap by developing standards-based curricula for clinical CHWs and identifying, training and placing 30 CHWs within multiple health care systems to help reach and serve children and adults in underserved communities throughout Los Angeles.
CHWs learners will complete a five-week training program with us and then move to a five-month internship experience at an assigned partner health care site. The CDU CHW Academy in partnership with Providence is creating a career ladder for entry-level workers to develop their skill set and provide them with career growth opportunities within health care, specifically within the six Providence hospitals and Community Health Departments, clinics, and other community nonprofit partners including:
- Cedars Sinai Medical Center
- California Hospital Medical Center-Dignity Health
- Northridge Hospital Medical Center-Dignity Health
- Providence South Bay
- Providence San Fernando Valley
- San Fernando Community Health Center
- Westside Family Health Center
- Harbor Community Health Centers
Project Title
A Community Health Worker Intervention to Identify and Decrease Barriers to Pre-Procedural COVID-19 Testing among Los Angeles County Department of Health Safety-Net Patients
Project Summary
With the current pandemic, COVID-19 testing for patients has become an essential first step in the provision of critical procedural care. However, the range of reasons why vulnerable patients in safety net health care settings refuse COVID-19 testing is little understood. This grant is an innovative proposal that seeks to (1) bring together machine learning and qualitative in-depth interviews to understand the reasons why Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LACDHS) safety net patients who require COVID-19 testing for procedures refuse or accept COVID-19 testing, and (2) utilize the knowledge gleaned to develop and implement a Community Health Worker (CHW)-based intervention, using LACDHS CHWs, that addresses the multilevel obstacles to COVID-19 testing. Insights gained from this research may be of benefit to improve COVID-19 uptake in other similar safety net settings with CHWs and in planning the future uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in such medically underserved settings.
