Why Community Health Workers’ Roles in Latinx Communities Are Essential

Abstract

This first-person narrative examines life-changing effects that community health workers (CHWs) have on the well-being of marginalized community members and illuminates Chicago, Illinois’ HealthConnect One as an example of a new health care organization needed to promote equity. CHWs offer culturally informed health services that are healing and transformative, and their work promotes health practice reforms that motivate equity through incremental and steady change. CHWs’ work also underscores the need for clinicians and organizations to respond to deeply entrenched, long-standing patterns of oppression in ways that draw upon data and lived experience to support and advance linguistically and culturally proficient service delivery in Latinx communities and in all marginalized communities.