Publications & Resources

Explore our resources, publications, reports and videos on health and housing.

Community Health Workers: A Promising Program Model to Advance Health & Well-Being in Affordable Housing & Community Development 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, NeighborWorks America began exploring the community health worker (CHW) model as an opportunity to deepen its network’s housing and health equity strategy work in communities. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country in 2020, NeighborWorks network organizations met the moment and quickly pivoted their core community development and housing work to respond to their communities’ and residents’ urgent health needs. 

In a bid to adapt and shift programs and services, fulfill resident’s needs, establish new partnerships, secure funding, sustain long-term operations, and support keeping communities healthy, safe, well and connected, NeighborWorks started to hear from network organizations that there was interest in formalizing COVID-19 response work into the long-term operations of their organizations. The CHW toolkit "Community Health Workers: A Promising Program Model to Advance Health & Well-Being in Affordable Housing and Community Development"  covers eight major components of a CHW program that housing and community development organizations should consider when implementing a CHW model. 

Featured Resource

The great majority of America's high-performing community development organizations are actively tackling health challenges in their communities.

In a peer-reviewed paper published by the international public health journal "Cities and Health," we examine how community development builds health equity.