Research interests, experience, and training of Community Health Workers: a mixed Method Approach

Research interests, experience, and training of Community Health Workers: a mixed Method Approach

The Affordable Care Act includes a call for community health care workers (CHWs) to be integrated into health care delivery systems to improve health care quality. In recent years, there have been increasing calls for community-based participatory research (CBPR) and patient-centered outcomes resear...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of community health Vol. 47; no. 6; pp. 949 - 958
Main Authors: Klein, K. G., Tucker, C. M., Ateyah, W. A., Fullwood, D., Wang, Y., Bosworth, E. T., Schueler, L. O.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York Springer US 01-12-2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Chronic illnesses
Community and Environmental Psychology
Community health care
Community Health Workers - psychology
Community involvement
Community participation
Community Relations
Community-Based Participatory Research
Delivery of Health Care
Delivery Systems
Ethics
Health care
Health Promotion
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Health services
Humans
Knowledge Level
Medical personnel
Medical research
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental health
Mixed methods research
Original Paper
Participatory Research
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Public Health
Qualitative analysis
Qualitative Research
Research Training
Training
United States
United States
Training
Community health workers
Certification
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Summary:The Affordable Care Act includes a call for community health care workers (CHWs) to be integrated into health care delivery systems to improve health care quality. In recent years, there have been increasing calls for community-based participatory research (CBPR) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), as such types of research hold much potential for identifying interventions to reduce health and health care disparities. Yet, little is known about the research training, knowledge, experience, and even interest of CHWs in these types of research or in health research in general (HR). Thus, the purposes of this study include determining if there are differences between participating CHWs ( N  = 202) in their levels of training, knowledge, experience, and interest in relation to CBPR, PCOR and HR. Findings suggest that certified CHWs, as compared to non-certified CHWs, have significantly higher knowledge levels across all three types of research ( β =  1.3, p  = .007). Additionally, participants had significantly higher knowledge of HR compared to CBPR ( β =  0.5, p  = .015), but not higher than their knowledge of PCOR ( p > .5 ). Qualitative data analyses performed to determine research areas of interest among the participating CHWs resulted in eighteen major research interest themes. Examples of these major themes are chronic illness ( n =  95), health promotion (n = 39) , healthcare services and administration (n = 30) , mental health ( n  = 29), and research evaluation and methodology ( n =  26). Together, the findings suggest that though CHWs have an interest in a wide range of health research areas, they could benefit from research trainings tailored to their responsibilities and interests.
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ISSN:0094-5145
1573-3610
DOI:10.1007/s10900-022-01122-3