Community Health Worker-28367

About the role

The Community Health Worker (CHW) is responsible for operationalizing Rush’s social determinant of health and chronic disease strategy within the community. The CHW will be a liaison to community members and patients as well as community partners, and conduct health and/or social determinant screenings, provide telephonic and in-person navigation services and self-management support in the community and in the Rush clinical settings such as primary care and/or the emergency department as needed. The CHW will also assist with different community initiatives such as health programming or other health promotion efforts as needed.

Qualifications

• Exemplifies the Rush mission, vision and values and acts in accordance with Rush policies and procedures.
• Cultural humility, ability to build trustful relationships with clients, nonjudgmental and empathetic listener; shows compassion and respect. Shows acceptance of people and their life journey.
• Demonstrates passion and commitment. Understands strengths and challenges of their community and which strategies will work best.

Responsibilities

• Provide health education and information in order to assist clients in achieving health goals by discussing behavioral risk factors, recommended lifestyle changes, and ways to reduce barriers to treatment adherence.
• Create tailored strategies for addressing community health concerns by assisting clients to overcome obstacles to care.
• Build individual and community capacity by increasing health knowledge and self-sufficiency through a range of activities such as outreach, community education, counseling, social support and advocacy.
• Address barriers that inhibit clients’ access to health care and information.
• Provide direct services (e.g., measuring/monitoring blood pressure, providing health screenings) in a variety of settings.
• Conduct screenings (including Rush’s social determinants of health screener and health risk assessments), one-on-one visits, groups sessions and phone calls within various community settings.
• Provide navigation services to patients, including scheduling appointments for primary and specialty care follow-up.
• Aid patients and community members with public benefits enrollment and redetermination, including SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and other programs.
• Verify insurance plans and assist out-of-network patients with connecting to care at an appropriate clinic.
• Provide social support to clients as needed.
• Motivate and praise clients for even small accomplishments and assist them to develop strategies to overcome barriers in order to achieve their behavior change goals.
• Communicate with interprofessional providers via Epic and in-person huddles.
• Mediate between participants and healthcare and social service systems or community resources (e.g., management of healthcare utilization) to improve the quality and cultural competency of service delivery.
• Advocate for individuals and communities to ensure clients receive the care they need in localized accessible settings.
• Refer clients to community resources and follow up using various platforms (e.g., NowPow).
• Manage a caseload of patients and community members from a variety of sources, including but not limited to COVID-positive patients, Emergency Department (ED) patients, school-based health center student families, Cancer Center patients, and referrals from Rush providers in a range of care settings.
• Monitor a daily list of discharged patients and referral work queue for outreach and follow-up.
• Attend community events and health fairs to complete social needs screenings, resource coordination, and information sharing about Rush and community programs and services.