Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Community Health Workers topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Cook County public health officials outline community health worker program, paid internships for Bremen students
Summary
An associate director from the Cook County Department of Public Health briefed the Bremen CHSD 228 board on a CDC-funded Community Health Worker (CHW) initiative that trains residents from priority communities and is developing a paid summer internship for students at district schools.
Alexandria Care, associate director of the Cook County Department of Public Health, told the Bremen CHSD 228 Board of Education that a CDC-funded Community Health Worker (CHW) program aims to train local residents, strengthen community organizations and build a pipeline into public‑health careers.
Care said the department serves about 2,300,000 residents in Cook County and in 27 suburban Cook County municipalities and described CHWs as “entry level roles” that can lead to careers in public health. She said the median salary for CHWs was roughly $48,000 in 2023 and that projected job growth for the role was about 14 percent based on the latest available Department of Labor figures.
The program, Care said, identifies priority communities “that...have a lot of marginalized communities” and seeks to recruit CHWs from those neighborhoods. Training partners named in the presentation included South Suburban College, SUGIE and a university partner listed as USC; Care said those partners help provide certification and classroom training. The funding source for the initiative was identified as CDC funding.
School staff said the district has connected students to the program through classroom outreach and local teachers. Mr. Mignon, identified in the meeting as an honors anatomy teacher at Bremen, joined the presentation; a district staff introducer said staff members promoted the opportunity to students who were interested in health‑career pathways.
A student who identified herself as Ava spoke after the presentation about the hands‑on value of the experience, saying, “it teaches us a lot about how to interact with patients and clients and what to look for when you're trying to help them receive, assistance for their needs.”
Care said the county is “working to kind of understand what our summer program would look like,” and that the initial plan is for the summer program to be a paid internship, without specifying stipend amounts or a start date. The presentation also listed typical CHW employers — government public‑health agencies, hospitals and nonprofit community organizations — and said CHWs can work on campaigns ranging from tobacco prevention to child‑health outreach.
Board members and staff did not take formal action on the presentation during the portion of the transcript provided; the presentation was informational and district staff noted ongoing planning for a summer internship. The district said students who complete the training can gain certification and exposure to public‑health careers.
The program description included specific program goals presented by Care: increasing CHW numbers in priority communities, strengthening CHW capacity at partner organizations and building a sustainable pipeline into public‑health jobs. Care attributed program funding to the CDC and identified training partners by name.
District staff planned to take next steps to define the summer internship and related implementation details; no dates, stipend amounts or formal agreements with Cook County were specified in the meeting record excerpt.
