title: Community health workers assisting patients with diabetes in self-management.
abstract: Community health workers (CHWs) have gained prominence in health care, recognizing the influence of community and environment on health. This study evaluates CHWs' efforts to assess patients' readiness to change and facilitate self-management goal setting. Six pairs of community health centers were randomly assigned to employ CHWs on health care teams. Each team worked with a defined population of patients. We assessed changes in documented patient self-management goals and clinical measures from both control and intervention CHCs before and after deploying CHWs, finding a significant increase in self-management goal setting between the intervention and control health centers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01655, USA. Lee.Hargraves@umassmed.edu
authors.forename: J Lee
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Hargraves
authors.forename: Warren J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.forename: Celeste A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Lemay
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pernice
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003150:Community Health Workers; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012648:Self Care