South Dakota’s community health worker data show promising results

Community health workers (CHWs) play a vital role in helping people navigate the health care and social services ecosystems in their communities. Most CHW work involves helping people with low income, including Medicaid beneficiaries, address multiple challenges to accessing health services and supports. This includes linking people to primary care providers, strengthening health literacy, addressing upstream factors tied to poor outcomes, and avoiding reliance on costly acute care or forgoing care altogether.

Key Takeaways

• South Dakota has found promising outcomes in a preliminary analysis evaluating data from Medicaid beneficiaries who received paid CHW services.
• CHW services were associated with increased access to a range of preventative and support services and decreased use of costly acute services.
• South Dakota will use these initial findings to inform continued policy design and CHW workforce development, as outlined in the state’s Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) application (see NASHP’s blog post, Rural Health Transformation Program: State Focus on Community Health Workers).