COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER LEARNING COLLABORATIVE LAUNCHES IN LAKE COUNTY

The Hunter Family Foundation is proud to partner with the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Lake County and the Steans Family Foundation to launch the Lake County Community Health Worker (CHW) Learning Collaborative and Medicaid Assessment Initiative, a multi-year effort to strengthen the CHW workforce and build more sustainable, community-rooted health systems across Lake County, Illinois.

This initiative was co-created with CHWs and local partners over more than two years of collaboration. Through shared learning and ongoing dialogue, CHWs helped shape the priorities, structure, and focus of the work, ensuring it reflects the realities of community-based care and the relationships at the heart of their role.

More than 25 CHWs representing more than a dozen organizations across Lake County contributed their insight and experience, highlighting opportunities to strengthen professional development, improve coordination across systems, and explore sustainable financing pathways that support their work.

The funders, with input from CHWs and technical reviewers, selected The HAP Foundation, alongside the Illinois Public Health Association (IPHA) and the Illinois Primary Health Care Association (IPHCA), to lead the next phase of this effort. Together, these partners will facilitate a Learning Collaborative that brings CHWs, supervisors, and employers together to share practices, build skills, and develop tools that support effective and sustainable integration of CHWs into care teams.

The initiative also includes a Medicaid assessment to explore reimbursement pathways that can sustain CHW roles while preserving the trust, cultural understanding, and community connections that make their work effective.

“CHWs are trusted connectors between community members and systems of care,” said Frank Baiocchi, Executive Director of the Hunter Family Foundation. “Their work is grounded in lived experience and deep relationships. This effort reflects what is possible when CHWs and community partners help shape the systems designed to support them.”

Collaborative activities have already started, with ongoing opportunities for CHWs, supervisors, and community partners to participate and guide the work as it evolves.

By centering CHW experience and strengthening the organizations that support them, the Hunter Family Foundation, in connection with our partners, aims to help build a more coordinated, sustainable, and community-driven approach to health and well-being across Lake County.

(photo: HFF grantees PADS Lake County and Rosalind FRanklin University's Community Care Connection)