Local pharmacies are including community health workers in staff

SIKESTON — A relatively new concept within healthcare, Community Health Workers (CHWs) are making a bit impact on patient health and wellbeing. According to the National Association of Community Health Workers:

“A community health worker is a frontline public health worker who is a trusted member of and/or has an unusually close understanding of the community served. This trusting relationship enables the worker to serve as a liaison/link/intermediary between health/social services and the community to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competence of service delivery.

A community health worker also builds individual and community capacity by increasing health knowledge and self-sufficiency through a range of activities such as outreach, community education, informal counseling, social support and advocacy.”

In practice, Community Health Workers work with individual patients to help solve problems they might have which would act as a barrier to care. If a patient’s insurance coverage has lapsed, a CHW could call in resources to investigate the reason and help with a solution. If a patient has asthma and, is in need of special services, a CHW can research and advise as to how best to obtain those services. If a patient needs to see their care provider and for some reason cannot access that service, a CHW can help coordinate care and get appointments set up. In other words, a CHW is a trusted community resource for all things healthcare.

Laura DeCota and Erika Johnson of Medical Arts Pharmacy in Sikeston and Michelle Pattengill of L & S Pharmacy in Charleston join Megan Cross of L & S Pharmacy as Pharmacy based Community Health Workers. According to Dr. Tripp Logan of Medical Arts and L & S Pharmacies, “Laura, Erika and Michelle have just completed a rather grueling course of instruction to become Community Health Workers. We could not be more proud to have them on our staff. Megan Cross has served as our sole CHW for several months now and we’ve seen great value in her services to patients. We’re pleased to be able to expand those services with the addition of three more CHWs. Our patients truly benefit from these services, that can extend outside the walls of the pharmacy. Using CHWs as patient liaisons and facilitators allows our pharmacies to work very closely with local social services, community services and healthcare services, all to the benefit of the patient. Community Health Workers not only bring better health to patients, they lower overall healthcare costs. This is truly a win-win service.”