What skills do you need to be a community health worker?

Advocacy is all about empowering the client by providing direction and encouragement to manage their own health and set and reach their goals.

Care coordination comes down to collaborating with partners to connect clients and patients to health. Sometimes this means helping to develop and implement care plans.

Communication is one of the most important skills of a community health worker. Working as an advocate for health needs in a diverse community requires strong listening and language skills. Building rapport and trust with members of the community is also part of the job.

Cultural humility can really go a long way in building lasting relationships with the community -- part of this includes understanding and working to reduce health disparities.

Facilitation skills are key in being able to deliver health information clearly by explaining terms in plain language, promoting healthy behavior change findings, and using resources to develop self-efficacy skills.

Research skills are needed to identify key issues in communities and their causes. This means conducting evaluation projects, collecting data, sharing results, and communicating to stakeholders to make changes in services.

Outreach skills or developing and implementing outreach plans by sharing information about programs and resources, as well as creating and maintaining relationships with community members and partners.