Asian Women for Health’s Community Health Workers Program

December 23, 2022

Asian Women for Health (AWFH) is proud to announce a new Initiative for this upcoming Spring 2023. With the pandemic exacerbating a lot of pre-existing health disparities and inequities in the Asian community, AWFH have developed this training program as an upstream solution to provide more culturally competent and linguistically appropriate care by training unemployed or underemployed individuals to become community health workers (CHWs) in their communities.

However, despite the crucial role of CHWs to help marginalized communities overcome obstacles like language barriers or a lack of health literacy to access vital and life-saving services, Asians are still severely underrepresented. Thus, it’s more important than ever to provide these opportunities to upskill those who may lack higher education credentials, but still have the passion and drive to break into the medical or research sector as health advocates.

By training students with lived experience, they would be better equipped to serve as the bridge between their communities and the institutions with resources to help them. This not only allows AWFH to help underserved individuals access a lucrative career pathway to self-sufficiency by breaking into the healthcare industry, but to also directly increase the level of cultural responsiveness in these existing institutions. To better support students of all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, our in-house Case Manager will also provide extensive social services support and job readiness training to guide students in their job search process.

We are pleased to support AWFH, an Honoring Choices Partner, and connect them to other HCM Partners working on similar initiatives to ensure the Asian CHWs are well represented across the Commonwealth.