Community Health Worker, Manager - Greater Chicago, Illinois

Waymark is a team of healthcare providers, technologists, and builders whose mission is to bring the best healthcare to Medicaid populations. Guided by the communities we serve, we bring support and technology-enabled care to help primary care providers keep Medicaid patients healthy. We are building the tools and designing an approach to enable care to reach the patients who can benefit most.  

Our core values embody the essence of what makes Waymark a unique team today, and what we look for, nurture, and sustain as a team. We are bold builders, believing that the greatest challenges in care delivery can be solved when we harness the power of community and technology. We are humble learners, seeking feedback and perspectives different from our own, and welcome challenges to our conclusions. We experiment to improve, actively seeking data to inform decisions and to assess our own performance. We act with focused urgency, our commitment to our mission drives us to tirelessly pursue results.

If this vision resonates with you, we hope you consider bringing your creativity, your energy, your curiosity to Waymark.

About this role

As the Chicago Community Health Worker (CHW) Manager for Waymark, you will lead our community health workers in the region. Reporting to the VP of Market Operations, you will supervise and manage a team of CHWs – including helping them implement their day-to-day priorities, providing coaching and support around patient care, and managing performance to team goals. As a leader in a growing organization, you will also develop and steward community partnerships and resource information to support patient care, and impact how we design, structure, and implement the CHW experience for our employees, spanning recruitment, hiring and training, deployment, mentorship, resourcing, providing pathways to advancement, and advocating for CHWs across our organization and externally. 

Responsibilities

• Provide direct supervision of the day-to-day activities of CHWs in the greater Chicago area, including helping them establish and implement their schedules and priorities. 
• Lead weekly team huddles with a multidisciplinary team – including CHWs, licensed clinical social workers, pharmacists, and care coordinators – to coordinate patient care.
• Provide CHWs with coaching, mentorship, and support to ensure satisfaction and sustainability within the CHW role, and to ensure competency validation, including by managing one-on-one and group meetings with the CHW team and occasionally shadowing fieldwork.
• Manage staffing schedules to ensure patient coverage and continuity of care within the local CHW team.
• Review data dashboards to manage CHW performance relative to goals and identify strengths and opportunities. 
• Work with the Operations and Learning & Development teams to hire, train, deploy, and provide ongoing support to local CHWs.
• Navigate technology systems to supervise CHW documentation and ensure quality care
• Represent Waymark in the community and build and nurture community partnerships.
• Maintain knowledge of programs and resources available to community members that promote their health and wellbeing, and support CHWs in understanding and navigating those resources on behalf of those we serve.
• Contribute as a member of the local leadership team by representing Waymark’s values and contributing to a positive and collaborative culture across the local team.
• Maintain small outreach and patient caseload responsibilities as a working CHW on an as needed basis to support team coverage, including potentially speaking with patients over the phone or meeting patients in the community, home, or in healthcare facilities.
• This is a hybrid role involving work from a home office as well as travel required within the market (up to 80%)
• Current Driver’s license and access to an insured vehicle.

Minimum qualifications

• Experience supervising teams of community health workers or related local health workforces.
• Experience delivering health services as a CHW or related role and openness to supporting a small caseload  
• A leader with cultural and personal humility. Has a strong understanding of Medicaid and the barriers to healthcare access and quality among diverse, underserved populations, and is comfortable describing our work externally and building community relationships. 
• Sound judgment and the ability to quickly analyze situations and manage team members with empathy and care
• Experience and comfort using technology for virtual communication, scheduling, and documentation.
• Strong understanding of, and ability to teach and implement, principles of trauma-informed care, motivational interviewing, and harm reduction, including among popu