Improving Family Engagement Through Culturally Responsive School-Based Outreach
This webinar is part of a series on the Comprehensive School-Based Violence and Victimization Program from LISC Safety & Justice and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). DOJ OJJDP provides national leadership, coordination, and resources to prevent and respond to youth delinquency and victimization.
A Case Study of Community Health & Education Workers/Promotores de Salud
Making Life-changing Connections
How do you reach students and families that are disengaged from school and the community? School-based health worker outreach programs can help bridge the gap with trusted messengers.
Over the past century, Community Health Workers (CHW) and, in Spanish-speaking communities, Promotores de Salud have devised grassroots outreach and connection strategies to build relationships with residents in underserved communities. Through consistent engagement with families, they play an integral role in promoting positive health outcomes and connections to high-quality health and social resources. Further, CHW programs provide employment for residents who can connect with disadvantaged populations as trusted messengers. As employed resident leaders, CHWs play a significant role in devising innovative solutions to address community challenges.
Early community health worker programs were documented in China during the 1920s through Farmer Scholars and Barefoot Doctors (Perry, 2013). These movements demonstrated the effectiveness of training community members to administer basic medical assistance, such as checking vital signs and providing vaccinations and health education. In the 1960s and 1970s, CHW programs emerged in various regions, including Latin America, where the Promotores de Salud name originates. In the United States, CHWs have worked in a variety of settings for the past 70 years, beginning in the 1950s with grassroots outreach and education initiatives conducted by indigenous workers (Knowles et al., 2023). In more recent years, and in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, a larger movement has emerged to integrate the CHW model into a variety of settings, including government, health care plans, hospitals, and schools.