To address staffing needs, Travis County’s health district, Central Health, is opening its own certification program and training for community health workers.

“We aim to be the flagship … training center in Austin/Travis County by offering the best possible training, continuing education opportunities, and career advancement options” for community health workers, Shechem Sauls, Central Health’s Community Health Workers program manager, said in an email.

Community health workers – a profession that has gained increased recognition in recent years – traditionally work directly with people in their community. They provide preventative care and access to health services in order to “improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery,” according to the American Public Health Association.

While Central Health already employs people with the community health worker certification, they will launch their new program to meet the needs of their expanding hospital district.

Central Health’s program will include a paid training course, 160 hours of didactic instruction and an 8-week hands-on externship.

The hospital district aims to hire 15 more workers before March, Sauls wrote. Hiring more of these workers can better support the health care industry overall.

“We know we have workforce shortages in physicians and nurses and mental health therapists,” said Lisa Kirsch, senior policy director at Dell Medical School. “(Community health workers are) just another team member that I think can be really high value in helping us live our best lives possible.”

Community health worker Ricardo Garay, who advocated for his profession at a meeting of the Austin Public Health Commission on Sept. 4, said that community health workers provide a different, more intimate style of care compared to some larger health care institutions.

“When you start with the individual, you don’t see them as a health condition, but you see them as a community member, someone that’s a brother or a neighbor,” Garay said.

Marginalized communities have more distrust in the health care system. A 2023 Pew Research Poll found that 51% of Black adults say the healthcare industry is structured “to hold Black people back a great deal or fair amount.” For these groups, the style of preventative care that community health workers provide may be more substantial.

“There’s going to be some folks that, because someone they know works with one organization, or someone receives services from one organization, they may be more inclined to receive information or schedule an appointment with that organization versus another one where there is not that connective tissue,” Austin Public Health Commissioner Larry Wallace Jr. said in an interview.

Although Central Health has received recent attention for an audit investigation into their funding practices, Wallace Jr. said that in providing recommendations for the training program, the public health commission is not taking the audit into consideration.

“That’s almost like saying, ‘If I have an issue with my wireless and an issue with my internet, they’re still two different things, even though they belong to AT&T,’” Wallace Jr. said.

Community members may gravitate toward receiving care from workers who share the same culture and background as them.

“Often, somebody is going to have a higher degree of trust with someone who they think understands maybe where they’re coming from, or maybe what their family’s priorities are,” Kirsch said.

As a community health worker, Garay’s tasks have involved providing someone with a walker and helping them clean up their house. His interactions and the care he provides to community members play out in “a very organic way,” he said.

“We’re not just helping community, but we’re working with community,” Garay said. “They’re also educating us as to what’s happening and how. So I feel like it’s not charity work that we do, it’s just community work.”

With the personalized approach to health care that these workers offer, Garay said community health workers can transform the medical industry.

“Institutions have traditionally seen people as just their health conditions – prenatal care, cancer,” Garay said. “We’re more than that. And so I think the opportunity for us as community health workers is to redefine how health and wellbeing is seen.”