Authors: Caroline King, Alex Goldman, Vikas Gampa, Casey Smith, Olivia Muskett, Christian Brown, Jamy Malone, Hannah Sehn, Cameron Curley, Mae-Gilene Begay, Adrianne Katrina Nelson and Sonya Sunhi Shin
The objective of this study was to evaluate how the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (CORE) program has affected Navajo Nation Community Health Representative (CHR) teams over the past 6 years. COPE staff members surveyed CHRs in 2014 and 2015 about their perceptions of and experience working with COPE, including potential effects COPE may have had on communication among patients, CHRs, and hospital-based providers. COPE staff also conducted focus groups with all eight Navajo Nation CHR teams. The results found that CHRs felt COPE’s programmatic support had strengthened their validity and reputation with providers and clients, and enhanced their ability to positively impact health outcomes among their clients. Survey results showed that 80.2% of CHRs felt strongly positive that COPE trainings are useful, while 44.6% of CHRs felt that communication and teamwork had improved because of COPE. These findings suggest that CHRs have experienced positive benefits from COPE through training. COPE may provide a useful programmatic model on how best to support other community health workers through strengthening clinic-community linkages, standardizing competencies, and training support, and structuring home-based interventions for high-risk individuals.
Link: Strengthening the role of Community Health Representatives in the Navajo Nation
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Resource Topic: Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Program Evaluation
Resource Type:
Year: 2017
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Country: United States of America
Publisher May Restrict Access: No