CHW Training

Health Equity for All

The Center for Well-Being has been training CHWs for over 15 years, engaging California residents as community leaders and building their skills to provide peer-to-peer education. The Center's training curriculum teaches strategies on how to engage, educate, and empower the individuals and communities CHWs serve. Our curriculum is informed by CHW core competencies recognized by both the 1998 National Community Health Advisor Study and the 2016 Community Health Worker Core Consensus (C3) Project as representing the key core competency skills for CHWs. Interested in signing up for our next training? Please contact us today!

Training Interest Form

CHW Training Opportunities

We offer CHW Core Competency training and certification, in addition to specially designed curriculum and learning modulars for CHWs that work in schools, in community, at nonprofits, and within the clinical setting. All of our learning opportunities honor the lived experience of participants – and they are engaging, interactive, and fun! Interested in us developing a special workshop for you or your team? Contact us today!

Who Should Enroll?

This FREE online training is ideal for anyone interested in a career in the field of community health, those who want to find employment as a CHW, and for those who are currently working as a CHW and want to grow their skills. Upon completing the program, certified CHWs will be equipped to provide health education to individuals and groups, engage in strategies that can be used to help navigate the service landscape to link people to critical resources, and advocate for client and community needs in both clinic and community settings.

Why Get Certified?

CHWs work in a variety of settings and perform many different roles, and our training program will help you exceed in all of them! Additionally, many employers either currently, or will in the near future, require that their employees or new hires receive a CHW certificate from a training program like what we offer at the Center for Well-Being. By July 2024, this will be a state requirement. We’re here to support you in your career!

What Participants Will Learn

Participants gain a comprehensive understanding of the healthcare landscape in the U.S., in the State of California, and in Sonoma County specifically. Participants will gain competencies in health topics such as the social determinants of health, health disparities, systemic inequities, and health and race/ethnicity. Participants will learn to spot the key drivers of health inequities and learn how to address them through their work.

Participants will learn to use existing interpersonal skills to build trusting relationships with clients and communities. Participants will focus on developing existing interpersonal skills and learn why they are important for health care delivery. Participants will also receive training in how trauma-informed communication, empathy, and active listening can be used to build trusting relationships with clients served.

Participants will learn to understand a range of education strategies informed by adult learning theory. Participants will learn how to engage individuals based on different learning styles – visual, auditory, verbal, physical, and logical. Additionally, participants will gain practice in applying different teaching and facilitation strategies, such as encouraging group discussions, planning group exercises, facilitating skill practice, employing the teach-back method, and modeling to reach diverse audiences.

Participants will understand the basics of trauma-informed care, including the five guiding principles of safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness, and empowerment. Participants will learn stress management techniques, healthy coping skills, and the power of resiliency. These coping skills reduce secondary trauma among CHWs and help them support clients by building a self-care toolbox to increase resiliency.

Participants will build effective communication skills through compassion, empathy, cultural humility, health literacy, active listening, and the use of clear, simple language. Participants will gain a heightened understanding of the nuances of nonverbal communication, participate in activities to better distinguish between intent versus impact, and learn how to minimize miscommunication. Participants will learn how to leverage their communication skills to better assess where their clients are struggling, learn to recognize the barriers impacting their health and well-being, and serve clients in areas where they are needed most.

Participants will learn to engage, empower, and advocate for clients and communities. Participants will learn to engage their community around issues impacting their health and well-being. Participants will focus on the importance of cultural humility and cultural relevance when conducting outreach and providing education, and they will receive training demonstrating how encouraging collaboration and developing partnerships can be used as important skills to support individual and systems advocacy.

Participants will increase their self-efficacy and develop individual capacity in clients served. Participants will learn how to employ a strength-based approach to case management, harnessing their existing social skills such as empathy, devotion to social engagement, commitment to lifelong learning, organizational skills, passion for helping others, and serving the community. Participants will be empowered to help others leverage their own emotional and intellectual assets to increase motivation, create small achievable goals, and improve outcomes.

Participants will learn to assess structural barriers, prioritize needs, and link community members to resources and support services. Participants will learn strategies for how to help clients navigate the service landscape, increase their understanding of available local resources, and ways to link clients to those services, and they will learn how to help clients maximize the benefits from their existing resources. Participants will also learn specific techniques for interviewing a person who has been screened for ACEs, recognizing barriers, and linking them to needed services.

What Our Graduates Say

"I felt the sharing of cultural perspective from all attendees was extremely beneficial to gain insight into challenges and traditions of others who chose to do this training. Thank you for this experience!"

"Very informative. Most importantly, you made it fun and gave me confidence to engage with the entire process. Thank you."

"I appreciate all the care, dedication and effort that went into this training and the real love you have for people and their health."

"I felt really inspired actually. Really motivated and like I'm at the right place in the right time because I've been looking for something like this for a long time to be able to enhance my professional life, skill set. I'm ready to work now!"

"You were all very helpful in your presentations in a simple manner and easy to receive. The part I learned more about was our approach to clients. That makes all the difference for imparting information and help."

"I look forward to approaching a career in the future with these trainings as it pertains to my career in the future. Thank you for the opportunity to assist me to be 1 step closer into my field."

"Thank you to all the instructors for their friendly, warmth and for the safe environment they created for the exchange of opinions and ideas. Thank you!"

Our training is available for FREE to our community members through funding from the CDC, HRSA, Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos, and First 5.