Community Health Worker Interventions
This model uses community health workers (CHWs) or promotores to conduct community-wide smoking cessation classes or link tobacco users to local cessation resources. CHW interventions can provide important cessation services to low-income populations in rural areas who cannot otherwise access individual cessation classes or services in clinical settings.
Examples of Community Health Worker Interventions
- Campesinos Sin Fronteras, a community health education center in Yuma County, Arizona, implemented a two-year program that used promotores to promote smoking prevention and cessation among Hispanic farmworkers and other young adults. The program featured peer educators that offered culturally-tailored tobacco prevention and cessation information to farmworkers at convenient locations, including worksites and bus pickup locations. The program also facilitated peer support groups for tobacco cessation, referred community members to cessation services, and helped to enforce smoke-free policies on buses.
- The Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative (MDHC) at the Mississippi State Department of Health is working toward decreasing the incidence of heart disease and stroke through initiatives that emphasize the ABCS (Aspirin therapy, Blood pressure control, Cholesterol control, and Smoking cessation). The MDHC helps implement the Clinical-Community Health Worker Initiative in the Delta region, which connects patients to CHWs to promote chronic disease self-management. As part of this initiative, CHWs offer informal tobacco cessation counseling to patients and provide information about the state's quitline.
- Altura Centers for Health employs promotoras to provide outreach and education to community members, including migrant farm workers. Altura trains promotoras to provide information about disease conditions and behaviors, including tobacco use.
Considerations for Implementation
The Community Health Workers Toolkit provides additional information about implementation considerations for CHW programs in rural communities.
Program Clearinghouse Example