Public Health Health Promotion for Community Health Workers Training Course

Course overview

Community health workers are often expected to improve health behaviours while working across competing priorities, limited resources, variable health literacy and diverse cultural beliefs. This course equips participants to move beyond one-off awareness sessions and deliver structured, evidence-informed health promotion activities that respond to a defined local need. Participants learn how to identify barriers to behaviour change, engage residents and partners, select appropriate messages, and demonstrate whether an intervention is reaching the people it was intended to serve.

The course covers community health assessment, social determinants of health, health literacy, behaviour-change models and practical planning methods. Participants use stakeholder mapping, asset mapping, SMART objectives, logic models and behaviour-change techniques to design targeted initiatives on issues such as immunisation uptake, maternal health, nutrition, diabetes prevention, sexual health or mental wellbeing. They practise adapting messages for different audiences, facilitating small-group education, handling misinformation, making appropriate referrals and using simple monitoring data to improve delivery.

Instructor-led teaching is supported by realistic community case studies, message-testing workshops, role-played outreach conversations and guided planning clinics. Participants work with practical templates used by public health and community programmes, including a needs-assessment worksheet, stakeholder map, health-promotion action plan, referral pathway and monitoring dashboard. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a completed, workplace-relevant health promotion plan that can be reviewed with their supervisor, delivery partners or local public health team.

The programme is designed for experienced community-facing health and social care staff who already interact with residents, patients, families or voluntary-sector partners and need a more systematic method for planning and evaluating prevention activity.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct a rapid community health needs assessment using local data, observation and resident feedback
• Map social determinants, community assets and stakeholder influence using an asset and stakeholder map
• Apply the Health Belief Model and COM-B framework to diagnose barriers to a priority health behaviour
• Write SMART health-promotion objectives linked to a defined population, behaviour and timeframe
• Build a logic model that connects activities, outputs, short-term outcomes and intended health impact
• Design culturally responsive health messages using plain-language, teach-back and misinformation-response techniques
• Create a referral and escalation pathway for residents requiring clinical, safeguarding or social support
• Produce a monitored health-promotion action plan with indicators, data sources, ownership and review dates

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Community Health Workers — who deliver outreach, education and referral support in neighbourhood settings
• Health Promotion Officers — who need structured methods for planning targeted prevention campaigns
• Public Health Practitioners — who coordinate community-based interventions and partner engagement
• Social Prescribing Link Workers — who connect residents with services that address health and wellbeing needs
• Primary Care Outreach Staff — who support prevention, screening and self-management beyond the clinic
• Voluntary and Community Sector Coordinators — who run local wellbeing programmes with health partners

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have at least six months of experience in a community-facing health, social care, outreach or voluntary-sector role, and be familiar with the health priorities of the population they serve. They should be comfortable discussing basic concepts such as prevention, referral, confidentiality and health inequality. No prior public health qualification, statistical software expertise or clinical licence is required. Participants will work with simple tables and percentages rather than advanced analysis. A laptop is recommended for editing templates and reviewing sample data, but participants can complete all core exercises using course materials.

Training methodology

The course combines focused instructor-led sessions with practical application throughout each day. Participants analyse anonymised local health profiles, map barriers and assets for a case community, and practise outreach conversations involving low health literacy, mistrust and misinformation. Small groups critique health messages and build intervention logic models, while facilitated clinics help participants adapt the tools to their own service area. On the final day, each participant presents an action plan, receives peer and instructor feedback, and identifies implementation owners, first steps and review measures.

Course outline

Day 1: Community health promotion foundations

• Public health prevention levels and the community health worker role
• Social determinants of health and health inequity
• Population health profiles and local health intelligence
• Rapid community needs-assessment methods
• Community asset mapping and protective factors
• Health literacy, trust and access barriers
• Ethical practice, confidentiality and informed engagement

Workshop: Participants complete a rapid needs and asset assessment for a case neighbourhood and produce a prioritised problem statement.

Day 2: Behaviour change and audience engagement

• COM-B behaviour diagnosis framework
• Health Belief Model application to prevention behaviours
• Behavioural barriers, motivators and competing priorities
• Audience segmentation by risk, readiness and access
• Cultural responsiveness and co-design principles
• Plain-language communication and teach-back technique
• Responding to health misinformation without escalating resistance

Workshop: Participants develop audience profiles and test tailored messages for a low-uptake screening campaign.

Day 3: Designing practical health promotion interventions

• Selecting evidence-informed behaviour-change techniques
• SMART objectives and measurable intervention scope
• Logic models for community health programmes
• Intervention channels: outreach, groups, home visits and digital contact
• Partnership mapping and role allocation
• Referral pathways and closed-loop follow-up
• Safeguarding, consent and escalation boundaries

Workshop: Participants build a logic model and referral pathway for a priority health issue in the case community.

Day 4: Delivering and monitoring community activity

• Facilitating small-group health education sessions
• Motivational interviewing micro-skills for brief contacts
• Outreach planning for underserved populations
• KoboToolbox form design for outreach data capture
• Process, output and outcome indicators
• Data quality checks and confidentiality controls
• Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles for service improvement

Workshop: Participants role-play an outreach encounter, capture mock activity data and create a one-cycle improvement proposal.

Day 5: Action planning and workplace implementation

• Using DHIS2-style dashboards to interpret programme data
• Prioritising interventions with impact and feasibility criteria
• Budget, resource and volunteer capacity assumptions
• Risk registers for community health promotion delivery
• Engaging primary care, public health and voluntary-sector partners
• Action-plan governance, ownership and review cadence
• Communicating results to managers and community stakeholders

Workshop: Participants finalise and present a workplace health-promotion action plan with objectives, delivery steps, indicators and review dates.

Tools & standards covered

KoboToolbox, DHIS2, CDC CHANGE Tool, WHO Urban HEART

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions