A health policy expert in UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division led a team in creating an interactive tool for Families USA that estimates the impact of community health worker (CHW) services in addressing childhood asthma.
Katharine London, MS, directed a team at the Center for Health Law and Economics in developing the tool. Enid Vélez, MPH, senior Policy analyst, developed the spreadsheet, and Jeremy Tourish, MPH, policy analyst adapted and formatted the text.
Essentially a complex calculator, the tool helps states project the caseload, budgetary, financial, clinical, and social impact of CHW services. These details are often requested by policymakers when discussing health care delivery models that include CHWs.
Users of the tool can either enter their own data or rely on data compiled from public and private sources that has already been embedded in the tool. Download the Estimator Tool from the Families USA website.
This tool was created with funding from The Kresge Foundation, based on a model originally developed with funding from the Connecticut Health Foundation. The caseload calculator tool is based on one developed on behalf of the Hispanic Health Council’s CHIRP II Project, funded by the Connecticut Health Foundation.
London has more than 20 years of experience directing intricate projects for government agencies, analyzing health care quality and cost data for insurers and providers, developing payment strategies, and analyzing complex data. She leads a team at UMass Medical School that has researched the impact of CHWs for New England states and has designed possible models for both Connecticut and Maine.
The team will discuss the capabilities of the tool, including its ability to project improvements in quality measures and financial returns on CHW investments, in a webinar from 1-2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 31, which you can register for here.