About Community Health Navigators
Community Health Navigators (CHNs), also known as Community Health Workers, have emerged over the past 50 years in response to a lack of access to health services in our complicated and sometimes fragmented health care system. In Australia, except in Aboriginal Health Services, these have non-clinical roles, supporting the person with information to help them understand and manage their health (health literacy) and with practical assistance to access the health and community services to which they have been referred. For example, this may include helping to arrange appointments and providing help with transport to attend services and helping to link the person with social support in their community.
A CHN is a trusted person who acts as a ‘bridge’, helping consumers to overcome barriers to their accessing health and social services. They may be volunteers or paid employees. Ideally the CHN should be drawn from their local community or social group. For example, CHNs dealing with a specific language group should come from that language group and understand the persons culture and have connections with relevant local organisations.
CHNs need training in understanding the health and welfare system, how the persons context or their health problems may affect their needs and ability to access information and services. The need to understand the importance of confidentiality and be able to establish communication (across language or cultural differences) and a professional relationship. They should be able to assess the barriers that consumers experience and be able to support them to overcome these barriers. If these barriers persist or are widespread, they, together with their health team, may advocate for change. The CHN must also understand their own role boundaries and know when to seek help when appropriate.
CHNs have been demonstrated, in large scale studies, to be effective and cost effective (1). They have been shown to be successful in improving health literacy and uptake of care, such as cancer screening, and reducing hospitalisation of people with long term conditions (2). CHNs have been identified as a keyway for the health system to address health inequalities (3).
There are many groups developing CHN programs across Australia, The CHN Forum 2025 is bringing together leaders in the field to discuss what they are doing and how to build the capacity and infrastructure to allow these programs to be taken up and sustained.
