Indiana Healthy Homes Alliance and Improving Kids’ Environment

With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, NCHH has funded two rounds of Healthy Homes Workforce Development Mini-Grants, with applications open during late 2017 and spring 2018. These mini-grants help communities develop their workforce capacity to offer home-visiting services related to healthy homes, and to build a pool of trained community health workers (CHWs) trained in the healthy homes principles.
Certification and other training programs for CHWs are in the process of being developed in Indiana. Soon their work will be reimbursable by the state Medicaid program and other payers causing an increased demand for their services and CHWs will become an ever more integral part of the Indiana health care delivery system. However, at the current time, no training programs for Indiana CHWs on healthy homes or asthma exist.
The Indiana Healthy Homes Alliance (IHHA), along with its parent organization, Improving Kids’ Environment (IKE), have taught and promoted the concept of a healthy home for many years throughout Indiana. Past audiences have included homeowners, child care centers, landlords and their tenants, renovators and contractors, managed care entities, and medical providers. With the increased interest in Indiana in using CHWs in the healthcare system to access people in their homes, IHHA/IKE believes it is important to provide them with the basic skills to recognize and to give recommendations about the remediation of unhealthy housing conditions.
As a current 2018 mini-grantee, IHHA partners and IKE offer trainings about healthy homes to CHWs in three locations around Indiana. Along with the National Healthy Homes Training Center and Network‘s Healthy Homes for Community Health Workers curriculum, the trainings provide an introduction to asthma and asthma triggers. IHHA and IKE plan to follow these training sessions with others in more locations throughout the state and with ones that will offer a more in-depth coverage of asthma management.