Community Health Worker Impact Estimator Tools: Asthma & Diabetes

For generations, community leaders have seen how valuable community health workers (CHWs), promotores, community health representatives, and the many other variations of community-based peer support workers can be. As health equity advocates, we know that CHWs truly understand the communities they serve and have their trust, so they can effectively provide culturally centered and language accessible services and supports tailored to their needs. By helping to minimize the impact of socially shaped barriers to good health and health care, they help people improve their health and reduce health inequities, especially among communities of color, complex patients, and other groups being left behind by a health care system that was never designed to serve them.  And the evidence backs this up. This is why we’ve raised achieving the sustainable funding of CHW services as a top health equity and system transformation priority.

Nevertheless, decision makers often ask CHW advocates to make the business case for paying for CHW services and integrating them into care teams. To support these efforts, we worked with Katharine London and her team at the Center for Health Law and Economics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School to develop two unique, interactive CHW Impact Estimator Tools. These customizable tools will provide estimates on a wide range of budget, quality, and impact measures, including return on investment and social impact. Users can rely on pre-populated data compiled from a variety of public and private sources, or input their own information.

We are very excited to share this with you, and welcome your feedback.

Download Childhood Asthma Estimator Tool (Excel) Updated 11/12/2018

Download Diabetes Estimator Tool (Excel) Updated 11/12/2018

These tools are based on a model originally developed with funding from the Connecticut Health Foundation. The caseload calculator tool is based on one developed on behalf of the Hispanic Health Council’s CHIRP II Project, funded by the Connecticut Health Foundation.