Advocating and Connecting on Community Health Worker Advocacy Day

On a sunny and warm morning in May, 60 community health workers (CHWs) and their supporters met together in an old, historic building near the state’s Capitol for this year’s Community Health Worker Advocacy Day. It had been nearly three years since the Michigan Community Health Worker Alliance (MiCHWA) hosted its last Community Health Worker Advocacy Day, and one could easily feel how grateful and glad the organization was to have us all together again, in person, to celebrate and promote the important work CHWs are engaged in every day.

MiCHWA, established in 2011, is a community health worker information hub for a variety of partners and provides training, continuing education, and other resources to support the CHW workforce in Michigan.

The morning’s agenda was full of activities, including an introductory lesson on advocacy, a panel discussion, and visits to Senate and House legislative sessions. Throughout, small groups would quietly step away from whatever programming was happening at the time, find their way to the offices of their respective legislators or legislative staff, and meet to tell their story.

Over the course of the day’s events, we learned that it’s perfectly alright to feel nervous about engaging your state Senator or Representative, but that we need not feel intimidated. We learned the value of adding our perspective to state budget discussions and the power of a handwritten thank you note. Collectively, we recognized that we are the experts of our own lives and sharing what we know with our elected officials is a service, not a burden to them.

In the afternoon, I had the opportunity to join three women from the Lansing area as they spoke with the staff of our shared representatives about their experiences as community health workers: what brought them to the field, the various populations they serve, and what they see as the most pressing needs of those seeking their care.

We discussed the increasing challenges for some around housing stability and the growing number of recent immigrants seeking CHW services. We discussed the need for sustainable funding for current community health worker programs and ways to facilitate entry into the field, such as providing financial support for the training necessary to become a CHW. Most specifically, we reminded our representative and senator about their opportunity to support community health workers in the final Fiscal Year 2023 budget.

About a month later, on June 30, 2022, the Michigan Legislature passed a bipartisan $76 billion budget that includes $28.3 million gross ($10 million general fund) to allow Medicaid reimbursement for community health workers. There is also $1.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for “wages and other costs to expand the use of professional community health workers employed through the area agencies on aging network to prevent hospital readmissions.”

It’s great to see funding for CHW services in the final budget. I am grateful to have been a part of this year’s advocacy push to elevate the meaningful work of community health workers across the state, and I am hopeful that the conversations I was a part of, discussing the benefits that come from integrating CHWs into healthcare teams, are just the beginning of more momentum to come.