Briefs and Reports

Sustainable Financing Models for Community Health Worker Services in Connecticut: Translating Science into Practice

Key Findings

  • Community health workers promote health and wellness within their own communities, helping to bridge the gap between the doctor’s office and patients’ lives.
  • Community health worker services improve health outcomes, help providers and payers meet new quality standards, and can save money. Research on successful models in other states demonstrates that they can be sustainable and tailored to local needs.
  • The four targeted interventions modeled for Connecticut would improve health and save money. The models focus on Latinos with diabetes in Hartford, children with asthma in Greater New Haven, frequent emergency department users in New London County, and patients with cardiovascular disease risk factors in Windham County.

This report

This report offers a blueprint for potential programs that hospital systems, insurance companies, community organizations and other groups could pilot to both improve health outcomes and achieve a positive return on investment. Each model is projected to cost less than it would save in direct medical costs.

Click here to read the summary brief.

Authors

Katharine London, Kelly Love, and Roosa Tikkanen, University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Health Law and Economics