The Community Health Worker Initiatives Unit was created in 2014 as part of the University of New Mexico, Office for Community Health with the mandate to design, implement, and evaluate projects that utilize Community Health Workers (CHWs) as a strategy to increase New Mexican’s well-being, promote health equity, and minimize the negative impacts associated with the social determinants of health.
The CHWI oversees several innovative programs that engage the support of CHWs to address community health issues primarily impacting low-income populations. Some of our programs are statewide in scope and some are based only in Bernalillo County.
The mission of the Community Health Worker Initiatives (CHWI) of the University of New Mexico Office for Community Health is to contribute to the enhancement and integration of Community Health Workers (CHWs) into the NM workforce in an effort to increase health equity.
A CHW is a front line public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served. This trusted relationship enables the CHW to serve as liaison/intermediary between health/social services and the community to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery.
Through a network of approximately 30 community health navigators (CHWs) employed by the 17 partner organizations contracted by our office, Pathways focuses its efforts on identifying and working with the most difficult to reach residents of Bernalillo County, to connect them with a wide variety of health and social services. This program follows an outcomes-based step-by-step national model (Pathways). Our office serves as the “hub” and provides ongoing training and support of the CHWs, collects and analyzes data to ensure that participants of the program are having many of their needs met, and addresses system problems that inhibit access to these important services.
CHWI employs CHWs to do outreach, health promotion, and work as advocates for systemic change. Currently we have three CHWs concentrating their efforts in three geographic regions of Bernalillo County (Southeast Heights/International District, South Valley and Pajarito Mesa). These CHWs are collaborating with multiple partners in Bernalillo County who are part of "Healthy Here," the locally defined name for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) grant.
Healthy Here is a collective impact initiative in Bernalillo County committed to reducing chronic disease in the Hispanic/Latino and Native American populations in the International District and South Valley through environmental and systems changes that increase access to healthy food, physical activity, and self-management of chronic disease.
Partners include Presbyterian Healthcare Services (PHS), Bernalillo County, First Choice Community Healthcare, the International District Healthy Communities Coalition, Adelante Development Center, and numerous others.
Our office, in partnership with MCOs and primary care clinics in NM, places CHWs side by side with healthcare personnel from participating clinics to educate, support and connect their patients with needed resources. As part of this effort the Office for Community Health has created a "Social Determinants Prescription Pad" — a tool that allows health care providers to identify social determinants of health for each patient and refer them to CHWs located within the same healthcare clinic.
This tool is being used in the five clinics where our CHWs are co-located: In Bernalillo County - First Choice Community Healthcare in the South Valley, three UNM Hospital primary care clinics (South East Heights, Southwest Mesa and North Valley), and two Hidalgo Medical Center clinics in Grant and Hidalgo counties.