In a recent article for KFF Health News, “The Help That Many Older Americans Need Most,” Paula Span highlights an important shift in how care can be delivered in the United States: Community health workers. Community health workers demonstrate the value of moving care to communities, helping people navigate complex systems, and achieve better health. Yet we risk failure by asking them to fill all the gaps in our healthcare system. The question here is how do we rethink how we deliver — and pay for — healthcare.
Nurses can embed their clinical expertise alongside community health workers. When nurses and community health workers work together in neighborhoods, care becomes proactive and continuous, effectively integrating both clinical care, such as mental health, first aid and well-baby care, and tackling social drivers of health, such as getting a new wheelchair or helping access a food pantry, to support health and well-being before an emergency arises. In Baltimore, this approach is already underway with a Neighborhood Nursing pilot that began in 2023.
Embedding community health workers and nurses within communities is a back-to-basics idea, but a paradigm shift in how we deliver care in this country. It’s how we move from reacting to illness to supporting long-term health.
Sarah Szanton, PhD, is the dean of John Hopkins University’s School of Nursing in Baltimore.
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