Preparing Community Health Workers for Their Role as Agents of Social Change: Experience of the Community Capacitation Center

Abstract

Current efforts to better integrate Community Health Workers (CHWs) into the health and social service systems are promising, but may be less effective if they fail to support the role of CHWs as social change agents. The way CHWs are trained influences the roles they play. In this article, we review the literature on CHW training and summarize lessons learned to date. We describe how the Community Capacitation Center in Oregon uses a combination of content, methodology, and values to prepare CHWs to make an optimal contribution to health. Recommendations for CHW training programs and policy makers are provided.

Keywords:

• Community organizing
• community capacity building
• grassroots leadership
• social change
• social justice
• community building

Acknowledgments

We would like to recognize Samantha Kaan for her special contributions to this article.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Multnomah County Health Department.

Notes

¹The word capacitation is derived from the Spanish capacitación, which means, “the process of building capacity.” We use capacitation in preference to the word training, which to us signifies a top-down process that does not acknowledge, draw out, or build on the knowledge and skills that all adults bring to any educational situation. In this article, we use both words interchangeably.