What is a Community Health Worker?
Community Health Workers provide direct services to communities. They fill many roles in our communities, such as case managers, outreach specialists, community organizers, peer workers, direct service workers, and health education specialists. In these roles, they provide services such as informal counseling, service coordination, health education, advocacy, cultural adaptations, system navigation, and social support.
CHWs use their existing relationships and connections to the community to partner with clients to support them in overcoming health disparities. They do so by addressing root causes of poor health such as a lack of housing, employment, finances, food, employment, and healthcare.
We use the American Public Health Association's definition of a Community Health Worker:
“A Community Health Worker (CHW) is a frontline public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served. This trusting relationship enables the CHW to serve as a liaison/link/intermediary between health/social services and the community to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery.”
Our Work
At The Center, we are collaborating with stakeholders to empower, grow, and sustain this critical workforce in Montana. We are accomplishing this by:
- providing free, accessible online training for new and existing CHWs to improve their skills.
- hosting an advisory board to discuss community needs and formalize future funding opportunities to maintain the CHW workforce.
- creating a CHW Committee to standardize CHW work in Montana.
- creating a CHW documentary to highlight the existing work and value of CHWs in Montana.
eLearning/Tele-Coaching
Offering 24/7, drop-in learning for all community health workers. We combined that with the structured peer-to-peer discussions in the tele-coaching sessions. Visit this page to learn more about what is offered.
CHW Committee and Workforce Development
Additional information about the CHW committee and workforce development projects.
Current Sessions
January 2025 – Winter Schedule
Registration for the Winter session is now closed.
Registration will be opening soon but our waitlist is full. We’re excited by the overwhelming interest and hope to offer additional sessions.
The Community Health Worker training program is funded by a federal grant that concludes in September 2025. We remain committed to offering additional CHW training in 2025 and beyond. Please revisit this page for updates on future training. If you wish to be notified when new information becomes available, please use this link to join our CHW Training Contact List.
We welcome your input.
This program is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $2,930,656.00. with 0% financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit .