Priority 2: Home and Community Based Care

Expand home and community-based care

Increase the capacity of community-based providers to offer culturally competent care and services in the home and community, and reduce unnecessary utilization of high-cost institutional or specialty care

STRATEGY 1: Expand community-based health professional education

Educate and train health professional students to work in home and community-based settings

• Expand partnerships between health professional education programs and community-based healthcare and service providers, such as primary care providers, behavioral health providers, community health teams, and Health Equity Zones, to increase clinical placement opportunities for students
• Expand interprofessional classroom instruction to increase student understandings of home and community-based approaches to improve population health
• Expand home and community-based residency programs to enable newly-licensed graduates to obtain specialized training

STRATEGY 2: Prepare healthcare support occupations for new and emerging roles

Prepare healthcare support occupations to work in home and community-based settings

• Strengthen the ability of home health aides and personal care aides to work in home settings by providing training keyed to special needs of the home environment and preparation to respond to behavioral health needs
• Retrain or upskill current occupations such as medical assistants, patient access representatives, home-based workers, and mental health caseworkers in core CHW skills: patient engagement and navigation of community supports
• Research the potential business case for financing and sustaining CHWs through evaluation of patient impacts and development of an evidence base
• Explore emerging home and community-based workforce options (e.g., EMTs, LPNs, peer recovery specialists, medication aides, navigators, telemedicine)
• Support the emerging role of public health dental hygienists by finalizing licensure regulations, developing training capacity, and determining deployment and funding plans