Sitting in Different Chairs: Roles of the Community Health Workers in the Poder es Salud/Power for Health Project

Authors: Farquhar SA et al.

Evaluations of Community Health Worker programs consistently document improvements in health, yet few articles clearly describe the roles of Community Health Workers (CHWs) from the CHWs’ perspective. This article presents the CHWs’ points of view regarding the various roles they played in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project, Poder es Salud/Power for Health in Portland, Oregon, including their roles as community organizers and co-researchers. Rather than acting merely as a deliverer of the intervention activities, CHWs were able to build skills that make them more successful as CHWs by serving as community organizers and participating as producers of research.