Laying the Groundwork for an Evidence Based Literature for Community Health Workers

CHW Central is the preeminent web-based community of practice and knowledge

management resources for and about CHWs. Their work increases access to the most recent evidence on community health worker programs, metrics, and tools. Supplementing the Health Information Outreach Grant for the NNLM, this project proposes laying the groundwork for a comprehensive and evidenced based collection of literature that will be accessible to the broad community health worker audiences. This groundwork will include developing structured literature search based on relevant CH topics, standardizing the return of literature for expert review, and incorporating the most current literature into an accessible collection. Community health topics of interest include (but are not limited to): chronic illnesses, such as hypertension and diabetes, substance use disorders, cancer and COVID-19. This project will synthesize CHW research from 2021 into a concise Annual State of the Evidence report, with a pullout report for New England partners on regional research results.