Community Health Worker

Department: College of Public Health

Classification: Research Staff 12-month

Job Category: Research Staff

Job Type: Full-Time

Work Schedule: Full-time (1.0 FTE, 40 hrs/wk)

Location: Prince William County, VA 

Workplace Type: On Site Required

Salary: Salary commensurate with education and experience

Restricted: Yes

Criminal Background Check: Yes

About the Department:

For over 40 years, the School of Nursing has prepared students for interdisciplinary roles as clinicians, educators, researchers, and administrators. Students learn to address the challenges of a rapidly changing and diverse healthcare environment with hands-on experience in simulation, skill-building labs, and clinical settings. Within the school’s Mason and Partners Clinics (https://publichealth.gmu.edu/mapclinics), they gain experience working with culturally diverse patient populations in the Northern Virginia area which provides them with the necessary skills to deliver health care where it is needed the most. Nursing faculty, staff, and students engage in work, study, and research that have major impacts on health equity, vulnerable populations, preventative care, population health, and the local workforce. Serving as experts in workforce development, School of Nursing faculty are committed to challenging the national nursing shortage and producing talented, equity-minded practitioners and scholars.

The School of Nursing’s position within the College of Public Health, epitomizes the innovative, collaborative nature of the university’s culture. The School of Nursing plays a leadership role across the university in digital innovation for education, professional practice, and the delivery of health services. Students learn to address the challenges of a fast-paced, rapidly changing, and diverse healthcare environment with hands-on experience in state-of-the-art Virtual Reality/Simulation labs and 9 different community-based Mason and Partners (MAP) clinics. The School of Nursing prepares students to address multicultural and socioeconomic diversity to ensure all populations receive effective interventions.

The MAP Clinics are an integral part of the School of Nursing’s work in community health and prevention. These nurse-managed clinics unite community and academic resources to provide an access point for underserved, high-risk populations to enter a complex healthcare system. The School of Nursing’s work in the MAP clinics allows faculty and students to address the priority health care needs of fellow community members in Fairfax and Prince William counties using interprofessional treatment team approaches focused on personalized care and empowered access to health information and care.

About the Position:

The Community Health Worker plays a vital role in increasing eligible Afghan refugees’ access to and engagement with effective, holistic, strengths-based, trauma informed, and culturally and linguistically appropriate services as part of the HEAR-VA. This role supports the development, implementation, and evaluation of HEAR-VA, a service delivery infrastructure not just for, but in partnership with, Afghan survivors of combat and other refugees and immigrants who are impacted by trauma and violence. This role is responsible for recruiting patients into the program, screening for eligibility, facilitating clinic visits, data entry, and reporting.

In addition, this role supports the building of a trauma-informed, “no wrong door” community model of care coordination and cross-sector collaboration. This position will conduct outreach to community partner sites, including refugee resettlement agencies, and build sustainable referral mechanisms for quick access to comprehensive medical and behavioral health care for refugees in Northern Virginia.

Responsibilities:

Linguistically and Culturally Appropriate Health Care Access:

• Provides culturally and linguistically appropriate health education to patients in the core MAP Clinic sites and extension sites on various health topics across the lifespan, including acute and chronic disease management, lifestyle and behavioral change, health promotion and disease prevention, immunization, social determinants of health, and behavioral health.
• Works closely with an interdisciplinary team of health providers to tailor clinical messaging.
• Responsible for both in-person patient support and the creation and dissemination of informational materials.

Health System Navigation:

• Responsible for supporting the patient in navigating health systems, including accessing the MAP Clinic for care and referrals to specialty care at external organizations.
• Duties include informal and linguistically appropriate counseling to explain available services, application processes, follow-up touch points to ensure connection to care, and recordkeeping to track overall success rates of referrals to community partners as part of the research reporting requirements and program evaluation.
• The CHW is vital in the clinic’s “warm handoff” approach to connecting patients to needed care and evaluating the effectiveness of the health system connectivity implemented through this program.

Community Resource Navigation:

• Responsible for supporting patients through initial Social Determinants of Health screenings and providing education about available resources related to food, housing, employment, education, and legal supports. This requires remaining up to date on current community resources in the Northern Virginia region, including specific services, eligibility requirements, and application processes.

Community Engagement:

• Joins community events and resource fairs throughout Prince William County and Fairfax County to represent the HEAR-VA Program and engages with community members to provide a culturally and linguistically appropriate introduction to MAP services and instructions for connecting to the clinic for care.
• Uses these opportunities to meet community partners, particularly from Refugee Resettlement Agencies and stays up to date on available community resources.
• Develops and leads trainings for community partners and clinical team members on subjects including Afghan culture and society, cultural health and behavioral trends, and strategies for culturally and linguistically sensitive care.
• Joins cross-sector meetings with community partners to conduct informational sessions about the HEAR-VA program.
• Tracks informational sessions and training attendees as part of program impact reporting.

Telehealth Support:

• Provides technical support to patients in accessing telehealth services offered by the MAP Clinic and HEAR-VA Program. This includes educating patients about Zoom and any other telehealth modality, providing live instruction on how to equip their personal devices with virtual meeting applications (if needed), and preparing the patient for the virtual appointment with information to ensure a positive health experience.
• Prepares and delivers trainings to community members about telehealth and tracks patient engagement as part of the research reporting.

Advocacy and Process Improvement:

• Advocates for the needs of the patient community.
• Identifies and records clinic practices that should be maintained, improved, or introduced in order to promote better health outcomes and improve the accessibility and effectiveness of our service delivery with particular focus on linguistic and cultural tailoring.
• Attends frequent meetings with the interdisciplinary team to share recommendations, and also joins process improvement projects to advocate for the needs of the patients.
• Raises safety and/or ethical concerns immediately with Clinic Team Leadership.
• Maintains records of process improvement and is responsible for evaluating the efficacy of each quality improvement cycle.
• Reports results of quality improvement cycles as part of the research program’s reporting requirements and sustainability plan. In addition, assists in preparing the culminating manual.

Sustainability Planning and Dissemination:

• Assists with the creation and dissemination of the HEAR-VA manual, which outlines the program framework of trauma-informed and culturally sensitive best practices that is scalable to other high-need populations.
• Assists with disseminating research findings to all stakeholders via recommendations and/or a best practice report championing efforts to include all stakeholder perspectives and unifies the refugee health framework.

Collaboration:

• Joins interdisciplinary workgroups on topics related to clinical operations and health promotion as assigned. Must be available for evening and weekend clinic support as needed.

Other related duties as assigned. 

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Community Health, Health Promotion, Public Health, or another health-related field, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Some experience, typically 1 year, in a health care setting in a role with direct patient engagement, health promotion, and outreach experience.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Attributes (KSAOs):

Knowledge of:

• An understanding of the Afghan community, including social determinants of health, health issues, ways to improve health and self-care, and basic public-health principles.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills for interacting with patients, students, professionals, community partners, and vendors, and in presenting research data.
• Excellent leadership and organizational skills.
• Effective conflict resolution, decision-making, and strategy-planning to implement program directions.
• Cultural competence to engage and support individuals from varied backgrounds and experiences.
• Competence in administrative tasks, including seamless and HIPAA-secure data exchange and appropriate allocation of resources.
• Resilience and stability, especially in challenging situations or environments.
• Capacity to adjust strategies based on healthcare or organizational changes.

Demonstrated:

• Understanding of the research process and principles of research design.
• Management skills in creating, implementing, and managing health promotion and outreach initiatives.
• Ability to empower and motivate patients to set and reach their goals by supporting behavior change.
• Ethical foundation to guide decisions and actions in line with professional standards.

Ability to:

• Translate healthy behaviors into culturally appropriate equivalents.
• Excellent ability to deliver health information clearly.
• Develop and implement outreach plans to share information about the HEAR-VA Program.
• Build and nurture professional relationships, emphasizing empathy and understanding.
• Collaborate effectively with a multidisciplinary team.
• Multitask with excellent time management and attention to detail, particularly in data entry and report creation.
• Utilize Microsoft Office, Excel, Outlook, Zoom, and research software.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated preference for Dari or Pashto language skills.

Instructions to Applicants: 

For full consideration, applicants must apply for the Community Health Worker (Requisition#10002504) at https://jobs.gmu.edu/. Complete and submit the online application to include three professional references with contact information, and provide a cover letter of interest and resume for review. 

Posting Open Date:  April 30, 2025

For Full Consideration, Apply by:  May 14, 2025

Open Until Filled:  Yes