CHAMPS – COMMUNITY HEALTH AND MOBILIZATION PREVENTION SERVICES

CHAMPS (Community Health and Mobilization Prevention Services) is Community Education Group’s signature educational program, and is designed to train Community Health Workers (CHWs) throughout West Virginia.
In the six-week intensive training, CHAMPS delivers 147 hours of training that covers a range of topics, such as Harm Reduction, Mental Health First Aid, and the basics of HIV/SUD/Hepatitis C, among many others. CHAMPS trainees receive a stipend of $15/hour for the training, and receive a certificate after completion detailing the number of hours completed, as well as the topical areas in which they received training. In 2023, the CHAMPS program has already produced 106 graduates, with approximately 80 participants preparing to begin training in Cohort #3, which starts in July 2023. More than 93% of these trainees are expected to graduate by August 2023. Upon successful completion of the program, graduates are fully prepared to work as Community Health Workers in their communities, and can leverage their training experience and the professional network they’ve begun building through CHAMPS into full-time positions in health care, social services, and non-profit work.
CHAMPS is made possible with support from the Appalachian Regional Commission and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

For more information, contact the CHAMPS team at champs@communityeducationgroup.org.

Background

The CHAMPS program began in 2004 to train CHWs to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Washington, D.C.. Today, CHAMPS-trained CHWs still learn the necessary information and skills to help combat HIV/AIDS, but are also prepared to combat the syndemic, an even broader public health concern for West Virginia that is the result of HIV/AIDS, Substance Use Disorder, and viral hepatitis overlapping and amplifying one another. CHAMPS aims to:

• Recruit a motivated workforce from within the community.
• Train health workers in strategies that are effective in the community.
• Deploy community health workers to address public health concerns through outreach, screening, prevention, partnerships, and referral to care.

Since CHAMPS began, these trained health workers have served their communities in vital public health roles, such as outreach worker, HIV/AIDS testers and counselors, and linkage workers.

For more information on the CHAMPS paid training program, please click here.

For organizations looking to hire Community Health Workers, please click here.