Group of volunteers wearing blue shirts with volunteer badges, sitting and standing in a storage room with shelves of food items.
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CHW - Social Worker Coalition
About

Community health worker (CHW) and social worker (SW) collaboration is crucial to illness prevention and management, yet systems often engage the two workforces in silos and miss opportunities for cross-sector alignment.

In 2021, a national workgroup of over two dozen CHWs, SWs, and public health experts convened to improve CHW/ SW collaboration and integration across the United States. The workgroup developed a conceptual framework that describes structural, systemic, and organizational factors that influence CHW/SW collaboration.

Best practices include standardized training, delineated roles and scopes of practice, clear workflows, regular communication, a shared system for documentation, and ongoing support or supervision.

A woman hugging a young girl outdoors with a white building in the background.
Two women sitting on a park bench laughing and talking, surrounded by trees at sunset.
A smiling family of four sitting outdoors in a fall forest with autumn leaves. The father has a beard and dark hair, wearing a light gray shirt. The mother has long brown hair, wearing a white shirt and rust-colored cardigan, holding a baby. The baby has dark hair, wearing a brown outfit. The young boy with brown hair and in a gray and red sweater is sitting on the father’s lap.