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Research & Projects
Community Health Worker Asthma Education Project
The Community Health Worker Asthma Education Project, funded by the New York City Department of Health's Childhood Asthma Initiative, has provided front line community health workers with the skills and competencies they need to empower families to attain asthma self-management. CHWs, recruited from the New York City neighborhoods most affected by the childhood asthma epidemic, serve as a vital link between health care providers, community organizations and the communities they serve. This COEH program has trained over 60 community health workers to provide asthma education, case management and advocacy for children and families with asthma.
The 350-hour curriculum for this program, which was written by staff at COEH, is designed to prepare CHWs to work with families of children with asthma in their communities, and to do community outreach and education. Core components of the curriculum include asthma education, asthma self-management strategies, case management skills, home visiting and home environmental assessment and remediation. The curriculum is designed so that CHWs are introduced to a strengths-based empowerment approach to working with families. The training is participatory and interactive with an emphasis on "hands-on" skill building activities. Following initial training, which began in April of 2000, monthly needs assessments provided the basis for ongoing training for this group of CHWs. A second CHW training was provided for the AsthmaSMART program in East Harlem. In addition to CHW training, Hunter staff conducted a series of focus groups with CHWs and CHW supervisors to determine their needs and concerns about a variety of topics including: CHW role in the community, recognition and rewards for CHW work and challenges in recruitment, training and supervision of CHWs. Lessons learned from these focus groups provided the basis for the initiation of CHW networking activities which led to the development of the CHW Network of NYC.
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