Team studies ways to bolster community health worker research competencies

Community health workers and promotoras (CHW/Ps) play an important role in community-engaged research, leveraging strengths such as the trust they’ve built in their respective communities. As CHW/Ps become more integrated into research processes, more trainings in research best practices can strengthen the quality and rigor of the work. Yet few standardized training programs exist.

To better understand and tackle this issue, researchers from the Texas CEAL team partnered with CHW/Ps to co-create and test a research best practices training. The peer-led training, completed by CHW/Ps at three different academic institutions, increased CHW/Ps’ knowledge and skill sets, improved access to resources, clarified their research roles, and more. To see if the training would yield positive results beyond the three institutions in this parent study, the researchers partnered with three additional academic institutions and one community-based organization to implement the trainings and learn from the results.

The researchers’ findings

• Staff surveys revealed positive ratings for the training, including its potential to be implemented by both community-based organizations and academic institutions.
• The flexibility of the training, including its ability to be woven into the workday, was found to be a key facilitator.
• The training is unlike others in that it is peer-led, designed to meet sites’ needs, and relevant to research best practices broadly rather than the parameters of a specific study.

The evidence-informed opportunities

• Academic institutions can work with CHW/P organizations to promote this type of research training for CHW/Ps.
• Moving forward, additional research can continue to shed light on these trainings. For example, further research could study promising ways to recruit and support peer facilitators (Champions) and uncover additional ways to deliver the training.
• Those wishing to access the research best practices training for CHW/Ps, and the materials needed to implement it, can visit https://www.chwresearchtraining.org.*