National Community Health Worker Advocacy Survey Report

The 2014 National Community Health Worker Advocacy Survey (NCHWAS) is the largest on-line survey of Community Health Workers ever conducted. NCHWAS aims to describe (1) the state of CHWs as a professional field and (2) the impact of CHW community advocacy on community engagement to address health disparities. Although Community Health Workers or CHWs go by a variety of titles including, Promotora de Salud, Community Health Representatives, Community Health Aides, Peer Educators, and Patient Navigators to name just a few, we use the term Community Health Worker or CHWs as the umbrella term to describe the workforce.

The on-line survey was distributed to CHWs through local, state and national CHW professional associations, programs and allies and was available in English, Spanish and Korean. Data gathered through NCHWAS is intended to be ‘open source’ and available for states and CHW networks to use for planning and workforce sustainability efforts. Data reported here are intended for public presentations and reports and not intended for publication in academic journals.

This report represents preliminary data for 45 of 50 United States and 4 of 14 US territories. A total of 1,995 individuals initiated the on-line survey, of which 1858 self-identified as a CHW of whom 1,767 had not taken the survey in the previous 12 months and were eligible to complete the survey. This report includes data for CHWs who initiated the survey and may or may not have completed the entire survey thus the number of participants fluctuates by question as responses were not required for every question.