Formerly Minnesota International Health Volunteers

Improving the health of women, children and their communities around the world.

The number of community health workers—also called lay health workers community health advisors or representatives, promotores(as) de salud and more—in the U.S. increased by more than 40 percent between 2000 and 2005. Minnesota follows this steep upward trend.

Because of increasing costs of medical care and insurance, many health care systems and organizations are discovering the benefits of training people to spread health information within their own communities and act as links to the formal health care system.

What We Do
Our network aims to facilitate resource-sharing and an information exchange among Minnesota’s community health workers from different organizations, communities and disciplines. In order to do this, we:

    * Hold monthly meetings for community health workers to receive in-service training and to network
    * Organize regional training opportunities for CHWs and their employers in urban and rural areas
    * Provide links to resources for CHWs and CHW employers
    * Organize a statewide conference for community health workers, employers, policy makers and others

 Organizational sponsors: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation and The Bush Foundation

Minnesota Community Health Worker Directory

Contact Us: chwpeernetwork@wellshareinternational.org