Skills
Community Health Worker Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in community health workers, and how to build and show them.
What skills do community health workers need?
Community Health Workers need technical skills such as health education, outreach, and care coordination, plus people skills like cultural humility and empathy. They also use tools such as Electronic health records and Phones and tablets.
Technical (hard) skills
- Health education
- Outreach
- Care coordination
- Insurance enrollment
- Motivational interviewing
- Data collection
People (soft) skills
- Cultural humility
- Empathy
- Communication
- Trustworthiness
Tools, equipment and technology
- Electronic health records
- Phones and tablets
- Educational materials
- Enrollment portals
- Blood pressure cuffs
- Resource directories
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how community health workers put their skills to work:
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Health education” and “Outreach.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “cultural humility,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as State CHW certification near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our community health worker glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Community Health Worker training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.