Opportunities to Enhance Health Equity by Integrating Community Health Workers into Payment and Care Delivery Reforms

Authors: Kamaria Kaalund, Ethan Phillips, Brandy Farrar, Krista Perreira, Monica Taylor, Magdalene Wellman, Gaurav Dave, Warren Kibbe, Michael Cohen-Wolkowiez, Andrea Thoumi

This policy brief evaluated the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics – Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) initiative to investigate the payment model reforms and policy changes that support CHWs to advance health equity. The RADx-UP initiative utilized CHWs during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the many roles CHWs can do and the importance of trust building and relationships for community health initiatives. The authors concluded that to sustain these models, policy efforts should focus on expanding alternative payment models to prioritize CHWs in transformation efforts, revising quality metrics to support CHW engagement in care delivery, using existing competency frameworks to outline reimbursable CHW roles, and creating multi-year funding opportunities that support robust measurement and evaluation.