WED-079 - Embracing a Diverse Community Health Worker Workforce Through Capacity Building: Findings from the Program Evaluation

Brief Abstract Summary: In this session, learners will learn about the efforts of the Texas A&M University - National Community Health Worker Training Center (NCHWTC) to build capacity among Community Health Workers (CHWs) to increase their understanding of cancer-related information. It is of utmost importance to train CHWs with the intention that they will be able to utilize their knowledge and put it into practice within their daily work. The learners of the session will hear about the evaluation of our training, which assessed the quality of the Continuing Education Unit (CEU) and determined the elements of the training that CHWs found the most useful. This type of information allows for the improvement of this and other trainings with the intention of developing content that empowers CHWs to assist the disadvantaged populations they serve.

Detailed abstract description: In this session, we will briefly discuss the components of the self-paced online 8-hour Continuing Education Unit (CEU) training called Comprehensive CHW Training on Cancer Survivorship conducted for the diverse CHW workforce. We will also discuss the findings of our evaluation efforts about the effectiveness of the CEU.

Methods: After each CHW participant completed the self-paced CEU, they were asked to complete an evaluation survey. The evaluation questionnaire we used included five questions. Three Likert-scale questions focused on meeting objectives, relevancy of information and resources provided, and usefulness of information to apply in the community with responses that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Two questions were open-ended asking the most and least useful aspect of the training. Our team used cross-sectional evaluation data from the cancer survivorship training (N = 109) to calculate descriptive statistics.

Result: In the presentation, we will report the findings of the evaluation. Of participants, 73% (n = 80) were CHWs, 3% (n = 3) were CHW Instructors, and 6% (n = 7) were both CHW and CHWI, and another workforce. The participants were from 25 counties of 3 US states, representing different organizations. 94% (n = 102) of the participants reported agree/strongly agree that the workshop objectives were met, 94% (n =103) reported that the information and resources were useful and relevant, and about 95% (n =103) reported that the information provided in the training was useful in their community work. The CHWs reported that the most useful elements within the course were the use of videos, and the review of motivational interviewing and integrative therapy.


Conclusion: The findings highlight that the capacity building of the CHW workforce through quality CEUs is fundamental to strengthen their knowledge base and empower CHWs in their role of educating and guiding disadvantaged populations towards better health.