Presented on Wednesday, August 4th
Community health workers (CHWs) are a critical workforce for promoting health equity. In this presentation, we will outline CHWs’ unique contributions to addressing social determinants of health, with a particular focus on how CHWs have been active in COVID response. We will highlight how CHWs can play a role in health professional education and how health professionals can partner with community health workers to improve pandemic response and prepare for the future.
During this webinar we discussed:
- The roles of community health workers in promoting health equity
- How health professionals can partner with community health workers to improve pandemic response and prepare for the future
Presented by:
Denise Octavia Smith, MBA, CHW, PN is the founding Executive Director of the National Association of Community Health Workers. Mrs. Smith is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care Program in Global Primary Care and Social Change, an Aspen Institute Healthy Communities Fellow, and a Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leader. As a woman of African descent, a Community Health Worker, certified patient navigator and survivor of a rare chronic disease, Denise is co-founder of the Community Based Workforce Alliance and the Vaccine Equity Cooperative and collaborates on national initiatives to advance CHW leadership and roles in COVID-19 response and community recovery, pursue racial equity, and improve clinical and community integration to address the social determinants of health. She envisions a culture of health where individuals have self-determination and dignity, where communities meaningfully contribute to system design and governance and where societies eliminate structural barriers to well-being.
Ashley Wennerstrom, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor at the Center for Healthcare Value and Equity at LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans, where she directs the Louisiana Community Health Worker Institute. She has been a proud ally of the community health worker (CHW) workforce for over a dozen years. She focuses on CHW workforce development and policy, and she conducts community-academic partnered research focused on promoting health equity. Her work has been funded by CDC, NIH, HRSA, and PCORI. Ashley is a Robert Wood Johnson Interdisciplinary Research Leaders fellow. She currently co-leads the Louisiana CHW Workforce Coalition. Ashley is a co-founder of the Louisiana Community Health Outreach Network (LACHON), and a founding board member of the National Association of Community Health Workers.
Note: A confirmation email will be sent to you before the webinar. We will include the webinar links and documents that will be included in the email.
Hosted by the National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health