Columbus Leans on Community Health Workers to Reach the Unreached

Columbus health systems are increasingly relying on community health workers — trusted local residents trained to connect neighbors with care — to reach people who distrust the medical system or cannot easily navigate it. The workers occupy a space clinicians often cannot, meeting people where they live.

Their value lies in relationship rather than credential. A community health worker who shares a neighborhood's language and experience can open doors that a clinic's letters and phone calls never will, turning missed appointments into kept ones.

Health systems are still working out how to fund and sustain these roles, which do not fit neatly into traditional billing. But the evidence that they improve follow-through, advocates say, is increasingly hard to ignore.