Community health workers have proven critical to the ongoing public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we look forward to a post-COVID world, these highly trusted community liaisons are uniquely suited to help improve one of the most persistent problems plaguing health care today: health equity.

While Minnesota is consistently recognized as one of the healthiest states in the country, we also have some of the worst health disparities in the country. Over the past ten years, premature death racial inequality rates worsened in Minnesota. In fact, according to America’s Health Rankings 2020 report Minnesota is the worst of the worst in this category with the largest racial disparity increase of all the states. Statistics like these remind us that a one-size-fits-all approach to health care doesn’t work equally well for everybody.

Research shows that community health worker (CHW) programs have significant, positive effects on a wide range of health issues and quality of care¹ Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is particularly keen on the model because of its ability to bridge disparity-driving social determinants of health like culture and language barriers, food access and stable housing.

Working with WellShare International, Blue Cross has mobilized trusted community health workers to engage non-English speaking members in COVID-19 hot spots with households who list their primary language as Hmong, Somali, Karen or Spanish. The WellShare CHWs increase member access to preventive health education, help with accessing telehealth, connect to social services and other resources and ultimately improve health outcomes. Engagement rates are high and the program has expanded now to help increase childhood vaccination rates in vulnerable communities.

To learn more about Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota programming with community health workers, watch the NIHCM webinar ”Community Health Workers & Pharmacists: Their Frontline Role in the Response to COVID-19” featuring Chris Reiten, vice president of Medicaid, and Dr. Amy Fendrich, senior medical director for government markets.

1. Hamer et al., 2012; Yousafzai et al., 2014; Rothschild et al., 2014