Community Health Workers in Rhode Island: A Study of a Growing Public Health Workforce.

Community Health Workers are gaining recognition as a valuable, newly emergent public health workforce. This article describes a qualitative study that generated a snapshot of Community Health Worker employment in Rhode Island, gathered collective wisdom and stakeholders' perspectives about how to pay for a community health workforce, and highlighted promising opportunities to grow and sustain the field. This article summarizes the study's findings, and discusses its implications. The full report is available at: http://www.health.ri.gov/ publications/reports/CommunityHealthWorkersInRhode Island.pdf