Thank you for your interest in becoming a Certified Community Health Worker (CCHW) through the North Carolina Community Health Worker Association (NCCHWA)!  To recognize the rich, lived experience as well as unique and diverse perspectives from various settings, we offer levels for certification to promote advancement and pathways for CHWs in North Carolina. Several common themes are integrated throughout the levels that are core to CHW work: racial and health equity, trust, community and public health, and ethics.  

The development of criteria for each of the four certification levels was informed by the CHW Core Consensus Project (C3 Project) and the Standardized Core Competency Training, developed by North Carolina CHWs Jennifer Norville and Erica Hall, offered for CHWs in North Carolina. Most importantly, Community Health Workers statewide played a key role by sharing their perspectives in listening sessions through the NC Community Health Worker Initiative.  Core competencies were cross walked along the Social Ecological Model (SEM) with the objective of exhibiting the holistic ways in which Community Health Workers contribute to enhanced health equity, efficacy in service delivery and overall improved health systems and societal health. The crosswalk was developed and drafted by Rumana Shams Rabbani and Abdul Hafeedh bin Abdullah with Community Healing through Activism and Strategic Mobilization (CHASM).  

Community Health Workers can apply for any level for which they may meet the criteria and do not have to go through the levels in order. Eligibility for each track is determined by a combination of skills, training, and actual lived experience.