Abstract
This paper explores who a Community Health Worker (CHW) is and contextualizes the social, political, and historical factors that allowed for the growth of CHWs within the primary health care sector in the U.S. It analyzes how CHWs perceive their own roles and responsibilities within the U.S. health system as a means of highlighting the gap within health care services and the influence of Social Determinants of Health (SDH) on well-being. The second part of this paper relates CHWs to scholarship by medical anthropologist Paul Farmer and public health scholar Alicia Yamin concerning pathologies of power and the need for national health care reform initiatives that prioritize health as a human right. I suggest how the concept of a CHW informs current perceptions of well-being and health in terms of SDH and embodies the action needed to shift health as a human right social movements from theory to reality.
First Advisor
Kristin Johnson
Second Advisor
Ben Lewin
Third Advisor
George Erving
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Rights
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts in Science, Technology, & Society
Date of Award
Spring 5-14-2017
Department
Interdisciplinary Studies
Recommended Citation
Schowalter, Megan, "Putting Care Back into "Health Care:" An Analysis of the Place of Community Health Workers within the U.S. Health Care System" (2017). Honors Program Theses. 23.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/honors_program_theses/23
Included in
Alternative and Complementary Medicine Commons, Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons, Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, Environmental Public Health Commons, Health Information Technology Commons, Health Policy Commons, Medical Education Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons, Science and Technology Studies Commons, Social Work Commons, Women's Health Commons