The World Health Organization clearly notes that in addressing inequalities in population health, social determinants of health are best addressed using a public health model in which communities are engaged in identifying and resolving their own health problems. Currently, most CHWs interventions are disease-specific, offer social services, and in the process, fail or rarely address the very social and environmental conditions that worsen poor health outcomes in minority communities.

 Role of AAD

AAD trains CHWs, their administrators, supervisors, clinicians as well as community leaders and lay members to clearly understand the community challenges/issues, actively mobilize and engage marginalized, underserved and hard to reach minority community members, identify issues affecting their communities, and then come up with solutions.

Consistent with the initial overarching goal of the WHLI:  to meet the needs of a more diverse geographic, ethnic and racial CHW audience throughout the United States, AAD uses the WHLI curriculum to train ethnic CHWs to empower and equip them to address the persistent health disparities among minority and underserved populations and promote health equity.  In addition, AAD uses ethnic and culturally sensitive supplementary training materials during these trainings. The overarching goal is to empower the non-traditional, hard to reach, marginalized, underserved black/minority communities through capacity building, collaborative and transformational leadership development, grassroots community mobilization, bottom-up community engagement, and advocacy for collective decision-making for action.

Specific Learning Objectives for the CHWs

Equip ethnic communities, their leadership and service providers with skills, competencies needed to:

  1. Respond to local community issues in a culturally sensitive manner, use community-based participatory approaches and be agents of change.
  2. Understand the meaning of health, root causes of health disparities learn the: whom, what, how, when, and by what means of community mobilization for action to promote sustainable individual and community health and wellbeing.
  3. Promote cultural relativism needed to bridge the persistent gap between healthcare providers and ethnic minority communities.