25 New CHW Skills You Can Learn on Demand

Every week is a new opportunity for your team to grow and develop their skills, whether they’re community health workers (CHW), promotores, community health representatives (CHRs), peer counselors or people with a similar title. 

At CHWTraining, we work hard to keep up with the increasing number of CHWs in the country and the demand for them in communities. Many state Medicaid programs now allow providers and coverage of CHW services. That number will continue to grow, which means you could very likely be looking at some CHWs at your place of work.

This year, CHWTraining has added dozens of new courses to its catalog, rounding out offerings in CHW core competencies, refresher training, chronic conditions and healthy lifestyles. Plus, we offer courses for those who are looking to grow their careers.

Whether you’re looking to add new CHWs to your workforce and need to train them, or you have a need to keep your CHWs’ skills sharp, we have you covered with the dozens of new online training modules from CHWTraining.

Check out the breadth of courses now available on CHWTraining.

Community Health Worker Online Courses

1. Core Competencies
2. Chronic Conditions
3. Healthy Lifestyles
4. Career Growth

At CHWTraining, we designed a comprehensive template that’ll give you a headstart for a CHW job description that’s sure to capture great candidates that align with your mission. Grab it here.

Core Competencies

CHWTraining offers courses that are recommended by the C3 (Community Health Worker Core Consensus) Project.

Core skills are the specific skills or competencies a CHW must develop to serve as a community health worker. They’re usually part of CHW training programs, lead to certification, and support the CHW in their roles.

Many states, employers and communities follow the recommendations from the C3 Project. You can take the following courses on CHWTraining:

1. Communication skills

• How to use verbal and non-verbal language in communication
• Active and empathetic listening and communicating 
• Detecting and overcoming barriers to communication
• Building rapport with clients in their language
• Offering health resources in the clients’ language, including medical interpreters and translated documents

2. Interpersonal and Relationship-Building Skills

• Practice motivational interviewing techniques
• Use conflict management techniques
• Provide social support and health coaching, including self-management of chronic conditions
• Work as part of a team at work and with partners

3. Service Coordination and Navigation Skills

• Coordinate care and the necessary services, including transportation or childcare, so that patients can attend their appointments
• Make referrals
• Foster a collaborative environment for the team
• Help clients follow action plans
• Do follow-up and track client progress

4. Capacity Building Skills

• Help individuals build their self-confidence to manage their health and advocate for themselves
• Establish a network of connection and support within communities
• Identify local leaders and support them

5. Advocacy Skills

• Represent clients in conversations where they may not have a seat, like in front of legislators or the healthcare system
• Educate the community about the services available to them and how the system works
• Promote causes and use existing resources to involve the community
• Help clients speak up for themselves and provide them with the resources to do so confidently

6. Education and Facilitation Skills

• Present information that’s compelling and clear
• Remove the perceived challenges of health education so clients find the motivation to learn for themselves
• Turn complex topics into simple, practical concepts that are easier to manage
• Approach health topics from the community’s perspective so that it’s culturally relevant and accurate

7. Individual and Community Assessment Skills

• Design, implement or report on individual and community assessments to identify critical issues and possible solutions

8. Outreach Skills

• Educate community members about the programs and services they can benefit from to build and strengthen the community
• Learn how to communicate with different populations and in different spaces, like within health systems versus patients and clients
• Build resource libraries to share with clients

9. Professional Skills and Conduct

• Assign priorities, set goals and create a work plan accordingly
• Develop time, resource, and priority management skills
• Use problem-solving and critical thinking to find the best possible use for available resources based on the community’s needs
• Follow ethical standards, including codes of ethics, laws, bills, and other institutional guidelines
• Identify risk factors and potential solutions to specific situations

10. Evaluation and Research Skills

• Participate in evaluation and research projects to find the root causes of health issues in the community

11. Knowledge Base

• Educate themselves in public health, healthy lifestyles, social determinants of health, mental/behavioral health, and individual health
• Understand the US healthcare and insurance systems
• Stay up to date on the latest health resources

Chronic Conditions

CHWs are in an exceptional position to help individuals prevent or manage chronic conditions when they develop the right skills. This includes such topics as:

5. Heart disease
6. Stroke
7. High blood pressure
8. High cholesterol
9. COVID-19 
10. Asthma

Healthy Lifestyles

As trusted peers, CHWs can help all of their clients with healthy lifestyles. This can be part of a Promoting Healthy Eating and Active Living (HEAL) program or simply as a way to keep chronic illnesses in check.

These are the types of CHW skills you can expect your learners to pick up in healthy lifestyles:

11. Health education
12. Health coaching
13. Nutrition
14. Healthy eating
15. Physical activity and access
16. Meal planning
17. Weight and health relationships
18. Navigating social cues

Career Growth

Once learners have gained a foothold in basic CHW core competencies and have earned some experience on the job, they can work on perfecting their professional skills. This could be anything from working on a larger public health project to specializing in an area, such as food insecurity, to following a path to being a CHW supervisor.

CHWs on a growth trajectory can pick up these skills:

19. Stress management
20. Self-care
21. Conflict-resolution
22. Social determinants of health
23. Mindfulness and meditation
24. Applying for a job
25. Writing a resume

This is just a start! Check in with CHWTraining to learn more about essential skills for your team. Not sure what you need? Contact us for a free consultation.