Community Health Advocates
Roles | Become a CHA | History | 10 Commandments
What is a Community Health Advocate?
A Community Health Advocate is someone who, through kindness, compassion, education, and leadership works to remove barriers to good health and to improve the overall health of his or her community.
A Community Health Advocate (CHA) is a motivated, concerned individual who desires to improve the overall health of his or her community. The CHA may be a champion of a particular cause or issue, or may have a more general outlook on improving health. The real strength of the CHA comes from her having roots in her community. Her relationships with friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are usually much stronger than those between the community members and their health care providers. Her lines of communication are more stable and more trustworthy. She is more immediately accessible than are the health professionals. Her dedication, sincerity, and concern are more effective at motivating her fellow community members to improve their health than any frightening statistic or impersonal pamphlet.
Although CHAs exist in many countries worldwide, and CHA-type programs exist in many states, there is no single standard term used to describe these workers. Nor is there a standard set of duties performed by all workers in this field. What does exist is a job-cluster: a set of related jobs that serve similar and overlapping functions within the community. One attempt to clarify the roles and methods of this cluster of related jobs can be found in the Standards Of Practice Manual published by Community Health Works of San Francisco. Our CHA program is very similar to the one outlined in the Community Health Works manual, but adapted to the particular needs of the Mobile community and the EXPORT Center. In particular, our program is built with the hope that each and every individual in the EXPORT service area--and eventually in all of Mobile--will become his or her own health advocate. To this end, our CHA program is designed so that anyone who wants to become a CHA can do so. We will accomplish this by observing the following principles:
* participants will never be required to pay for any aspect of the training
* participants will not be required to obtain certifications or special credentials
* time commitments will be kept as reasonable and flexible as possible
These principles are in place to protect the limited resources of our CHAs and to encourage the growth of the program by minimizing the cost to volunteers in terms of time and money.
Roles | Become a CHA | History | 10 Commandments
What is a Community Health Advocate?
A Community Health Advocate is someone who, through kindness, compassion, education, and leadership works to remove barriers to good health and to improve the overall health of his or her community.A Community Health Advocate (CHA) is a motivated, concerned individual who desires to improve the overall health of his or her community. The CHA may be a champion of a particular cause or issue, or may have a more general outlook on improving health. The real strength of the CHA comes from her having roots in her community. Her relationships with friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are usually much stronger than those between the community members and their health care providers. Her lines of communication are more stable and more trustworthy. She is more immediately accessible than are the health professionals. Her dedication, sincerity, and concern are more effective at motivating her fellow community members to improve their health than any frightening statistic or impersonal pamphlet.
Although CHAs exist in many countries worldwide, and CHA-type programs exist in many states, there is no single standard term used to describe these workers. Nor is there a standard set of duties performed by all workers in this field. What does exist is a job-cluster: a set of related jobs that serve similar and overlapping functions within the community. One attempt to clarify the roles and methods of this cluster of related jobs can be found in the Standards Of Practice Manual published by Community Health Works of San Francisco. Our CHA program is very similar to the one outlined in the Community Health Works manual, but adapted to the particular needs of the Mobile community and the EXPORT Center. In particular, our program is built with the hope that each and every individual in the EXPORT service area--and eventually in all of Mobile--will become his or her own health advocate. To this end, our CHA program is designed so that anyone who wants to become a CHA can do so. We will accomplish this by observing the following principles:
* participants will never be required to pay for any aspect of the training
* participants will not be required to obtain certifications or special credentials
* time commitments will be kept as reasonable and flexible as possible
These principles are in place to protect the limited resources of our CHAs and to encourage the growth of the program by minimizing the cost to volunteers in terms of time and money.
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University of South Alabama - Mobile, Alabama 36688-0002 / (251)
471-7709 Date last changed: October 8, 2008 11:14 AM http://www.southalabama.edu/healthycommunities 
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