Free Community Health Worker Job Descriptions
Free community health worker job description templates: CHW, promotora, CHR, senior, and small org. With FLSA, certification, and Medicaid guidance.
Community Health Worker Job Description Templates
5 free templates by type, with FLSA, certification, and Medicaid guidance. Download as DOCX.
Hiring a community health worker comes with two things most job description templates ignore. First, CHW, health educator, and patient navigator are different roles that get blurred, and naming the wrong one attracts the wrong candidates. Second, the role sits in a real compliance maze: state certification, Medicaid reimbursement rules, a supervising provider, and HIPAA all shape what the job actually requires. Get those right and you have a posting that holds up to a grant audit.
At FirstHR, we build hiring templates for the small clinics, FQHCs, and nonprofits that make this hire, often launching a program or billing a new Medicaid service without an HR department. The five templates below cover the CHW by type: general, promotora, community health representative, senior, and a small-organization version, each handling certification and FLSA honestly, and the guide to writing a job description covers the fundamentals.
What Is a Community Health Worker?
A community health worker is a frontline, non-clinical outreach worker who serves as a trusted bridge between a community and the health and social-services system. They conduct outreach, help clients navigate services, provide health education, and address the social factors behind health, often under a supervising provider. Their strength is connection to the community, not a clinical license.
For the employer writing the posting, two things matter up front. First, this is a distinct federal occupation that goes by several names: promotora de salud in Spanish-speaking communities and community health representative in Tribal communities are the same role, while health educator and patient navigator are genuinely different jobs. Second, the role carries compliance that office roles do not, from state certification to Medicaid billing rules. That is why the templates below split by community and setting, and why the compliance sections matter. The next section sorts out the title confusion.
CHW vs Health Educator vs Patient Navigator
These roles overlap in mission but differ in occupation, credentials, and pay. Here is how they compare.
| Community Health Worker | Health Educator | Patient Navigator | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Community outreach and navigation | Designs health programs | Guides patients through care |
| Education | High school diploma | Bachelor's degree | Varies, sometimes clinical |
| Setting | Community, clinic, nonprofit | Public health, programs | Hospital or clinic system |
| Median pay | About $51,000 | About $63,000 | Varies |
A CHW works one-on-one as a community insider; a health educator designs broader programs and needs a degree; a patient navigator guides patients inside a specific care system. The CHW also covers same-occupation titles like promotora de salud and community health representative. If you need a trusted community connector, you want a CHW, so use these templates for that role rather than for a health educator or navigator.
Community Health Worker Duties and Responsibilities
Across every variant, CHW duties group into outreach and engagement, navigation and coordination, education and support, and documentation and compliance. What fills each bucket shifts with the community and program, but the structure is shared, which is why the templates follow the same shape.
A strong posting fills these with the specifics of your organization: the community served, the program and partners, the supervising-provider relationship, and the documentation your funding requires. For a structured way to scope the role before posting, the guide to defining job responsibilities walks through the process.
Which Template Should You Use?
Pick the template by your community and setting. The outreach-and-navigation core runs through all five, but the community, language, and structure change. Use this guide to choose.
5 Free Community Health Worker Job Description Templates
Download all five as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each follows the same structure: organization and role overview, key responsibilities, qualifications, the FLSA status with a confirm note, compensation, and how to apply, with the specifics left as fields. Fill in the brackets and post.
Template 1: Community Health Worker (General / Clinic)
The standard frontline role: outreach, navigation, health education, and connecting clients to resources, often under a supervising provider. The dominant meaning of the term and the base for the others.
Template 2: Promotora de Salud / Bilingual CHW
A bilingual CHW serving a Spanish-speaking community, providing culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach and navigation. Same federal occupation as a CHW, with a culturally specific title.
Template 3: Community Health Representative (CHR)
A CHW serving a Tribal community, grounded in the Indian Health Service tradition, with outreach and care coordination rooted in the community's culture.
Template 4: Senior / Lead Community Health Worker
A senior CHW who carries a caseload while mentoring other CHWs and coordinating the program. Usually still non-exempt, unless the role becomes primarily managerial.
Template 5: CHW for a Small Nonprofit / FQHC
For a small clinic, FQHC, or nonprofit hiring its first CHW, often to launch a program or bill a new Medicaid service: a broad role that builds the program from the ground up.
Is a Community Health Worker Exempt from Overtime?
Community health workers are almost always non-exempt and overtime-eligible. This is the single most useful compliance point for the role, and most templates skip it. The reason: the work is outreach and coordination rather than independent professional judgment requiring an advanced degree, and the role enters the field with a high school diploma.
Federal wage law exempts certain executive, administrative, and professional employees from overtime, but a CHW's duties and entry-level education generally do not meet any of those tests. Here is how that plays out for CHW roles.
The federal salary floor for any white-collar exemption is $684 per week ($35,568 per year), but for CHWs the duties test is the bigger barrier, and paying the role hourly, as most organizations do, defeats an exemption on its own. So the typical CHW, promotora, and community health representative is non-exempt and owed overtime over 40 hours in a week. Only a true program supervisor on a qualifying salary might differ. Some states set stricter rules. This is general information, not legal advice.
CHW Certification and Compliance
This is the part competitors ignore, and it is exactly where a small clinic or nonprofit gets stuck, because the CHW role is shaped by state certification, Medicaid rules, and HIPAA. Here is what to require and verify, recognizing this is a fast-changing policy area.
The simplest approach: check whether your state runs a CHW certification program and whether your funding requires it, confirm the supervising-provider and documentation rules if you plan to bill Medicaid, and build HIPAA training and certification capture into onboarding. State policies change often, so date your compliance review and verify against your state's current program. This is general information, not legal advice.
Community Health Worker Pay
CHW pay is well defined by federal data, so benchmark against the occupation and adjust for your employer type and the role's extras.
Within that range, employer type matters: market data shows local government and hospitals paying above the median, while ambulatory care and social-assistance organizations, which employ many CHWs, pay somewhat below it. Certification, bilingual ability, experience, and a senior or lead role push pay higher, and because the role is hourly and non-exempt, overtime adds to total pay. Benchmark against the figure for your type of organization and market, add for certification and bilingual skills, and disclose a range where your state requires it. The templates leave compensation as a field so you can set it for your market.
CHW Skills and Qualifications
CHW qualifications center on community connection and communication rather than formal credentials, so write them that way and avoid screening out the very people who do the job best.
| Weak requirement | Strong requirement |
|---|---|
| Knows the community | Lived experience and strong ties to the community served |
| Good communicator | Trusted, empathetic outreach and listening skills |
| Has a diploma | High school diploma plus any required state certification |
| Speaks a language | Bilingual ability matched to your community |
| Organized | Reliable documentation and follow-up |
The core is a trusted community member with strong communication skills and the cultural fit to reach the people you serve, plus any certification your state or funding requires. Lead with community connection, and keep each line job-related, the SHRM job description tools describe a good job description as a plain-language summary of a position's tasks, duties, and responsibilities. Keep the posting neutral, since the EEOC prohibits job advertisements that show a preference based on protected characteristics.
How to Write a CHW Job Description
A strong CHW posting takes about 20 minutes and does two jobs: it speaks to community-rooted candidates in plain language, and it gets the certification and classification right so the role holds up to a grant or Medicaid review. Here is the process the templates are built around. If this is among your first hires, the small business hiring guide covers the steps around the posting itself.
Hiring Your First Community Health Worker
A large health system hires CHWs through an HR department that knows the certification rules and handles classification. A small clinic, FQHC, or nonprofit making its first CHW hire, usually triggered by a grant or new Medicaid reimbursement, has a program director or executive director doing all of that personally. The certification, supervising-provider, and documentation rules apply anyway. Here is how to approach the posting and the hire for that reality.
After You Hire: Onboarding a CHW
The job description is step one, and a CHW hire is certification- and HIPAA-heavy, so onboarding starts with the paperwork and the compliance documents. Send the offer and get it signed, then complete Form I-9 and the rest of the new hire paperwork and tax forms, capture any state certification your role or Medicaid billing requires, provide HIPAA training with a signed acknowledgment, and run a background check and confirm a driver's license where home visits apply.
Then confirm classification, since a CHW is typically non-exempt, and orient the new hire to your community and program, your services and partners, the supervising-provider relationship, and your documentation and reporting standards, the kind of structured start that good onboarding is built on. For a small organization working against grant or Medicaid requirements, a repeatable process keeps certification and documentation audit-ready, and once your offer is ready the offer letter template handles the core terms. FirstHR connects the offer with e-signature, runs the onboarding workflow, assigns HIPAA and certification training, and stores certifications in document management, built for organizations without an HR team. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a community health worker do?
A community health worker (CHW) serves as a trusted bridge between a community and the health and social-services system. The core work is frontline and non-clinical: conducting outreach and building trust in the community, helping clients access health and social services, providing health education and coaching, connecting people to resources, addressing the social factors that affect health, and following up on care plans, often under a supervising licensed provider. CHWs are not licensed clinicians; their strength is a deep connection to the community they serve, which lets them reach people the traditional system struggles to engage. The role shows up under several names for the same federal occupation: promotora de salud for Spanish-speaking communities, community health representative for Tribal communities, and titles like health coach or outreach worker. Settings range from clinics and federally qualified health centers to community nonprofits and public-health programs. The unifying thread is connecting an underserved community to the care and resources its members need.
What is the difference between a community health worker and a health educator?
They overlap but are different federal occupations with different requirements. A community health worker is a frontline, non-clinical outreach worker who connects a community to services and is typically entered with a high school diploma, with a median wage around $51,000. A health educator, formally a health education specialist, develops and delivers health programs, typically requires a bachelor's degree, often holds a national credential, and earns more, with a median around $63,000. In short, the CHW works one-on-one in the community as a trusted insider, while the health educator designs broader programs and education. There are also same-occupation CHW variants, a promotora de salud serving a Spanish-speaking community and a community health representative serving a Tribal community, which are CHWs by another name. Adjacent roles like patient navigator and care coordinator overlap in function but often sit inside a clinical or hospital system. Decide which role your organization actually needs, since the qualifications, pay, and candidate pool differ, and write the posting for that specific role.
Is a community health worker exempt or non-exempt from overtime?
Community health workers are almost always non-exempt and overtime-eligible. The role's work is outreach, navigation, education, and coordination, and it enters the field with a high school diploma, so it generally does not meet the executive, administrative, or learned professional exemption under federal wage law. Promotoras and community health representatives are the same occupation and are non-exempt on the same basis. On top of that, most CHW roles are paid hourly, and paying a worker hourly generally defeats a white-collar exemption even where the duties might otherwise qualify. The result is that a CHW should receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a week. The one exception is a true supervisor whose primary duty is managing the program and directing two or more employees on a qualifying salary, which is uncommon for these roles. Set the classification from the actual duties and how the role is paid, not from a senior-sounding title. Some states have stricter overtime rules. This is general information, not legal advice.
Does a community health worker need to be certified?
It depends on your state and on whether you plan to bill Medicaid for the CHW's services. Many states run a CHW certification program, and certification is usually voluntary in the sense that it governs use of the certified-CHW title and eligibility to bill Medicaid rather than the basic right to do the work. Where a state has stood up Medicaid reimbursement for CHW services, certification typically becomes a practical requirement, because reimbursement generally requires the CHW to be certified and working under a supervising licensed provider. Certification requirements vary widely by state, from completing an approved training program to documenting a set number of supervised experience hours. If you do not plan to bill Medicaid, certification may be preferred rather than required, but it can still strengthen a candidate. Check your state's specific program and your funding source before you write the requirement into the posting, since this is a fast-changing policy area. The templates leave certification as a field so you can set it for your state and role.
How much does a community health worker make?
Community health workers earned a median annual wage of $51,030 in May 2024, which works out to about $24.54 an hour, with the lowest 10 percent under $37,930 and the highest 10 percent over $78,560. Pay varies by the type of employer: among the largest employers, local government and hospitals pay above the median, while ambulatory healthcare services and social-assistance organizations, which employ many CHWs, pay somewhat below it. Experience, certification, bilingual ability, and a senior or lead role push pay higher within the range. Because the role is typically paid hourly and non-exempt, overtime can add to total pay. The role usually enters with a high school diploma and short on-the-job training, and employment is projected to grow much faster than average, about 11 percent through 2034, driven by Medicaid reimbursement and health-equity funding. Benchmark against the figure for your type of organization and your local market, factor in certification and bilingual premiums, and disclose a pay range where your state requires it. The templates leave compensation as a field.
What should a community health worker job description include?
Start by confirming you mean a CHW rather than a health educator or patient navigator, then build the standard sections around the role's specific compliance. Include an organization overview, the duties, the qualifications, the FLSA status, and the compensation. List the real duties: outreach and engagement, navigation and coordination, education and support, and documentation and compliance, framed for your community and program. Keep the qualifications realistic, since the role enters with a high school diploma plus strong community ties, and add bilingual ability or a specific cultural community where relevant. Address certification clearly, noting whether your state and funding require it, especially if you plan to bill Medicaid, which also brings supervising-provider and documentation requirements. Handle the FLSA status, since a CHW is typically non-exempt and overtime-eligible. Note HIPAA and any home-visit requirements like a driver's license and background check. Describe the community and program so candidates understand the mission and fit. Keep the language neutral and job-related, and emphasize community connection over formal credentials.
Do small clinics and nonprofits hire community health workers?
Yes, and small clinics and nonprofits are a core part of who hires CHWs. About half of community health worker employment sits in ambulatory healthcare services and social-assistance organizations, which include small community clinics, federally qualified health centers, and community-based nonprofits, alongside civic and grantmaking organizations. Many of these are small employers without a dedicated HR department. The typical first CHW hire is triggered by one of two events: the organization wins a grant, such as a federal CHW training or health-disparities grant, or its state turns on Medicaid reimbursement for CHW services and the organization wants to bill for them. Both triggers land squarely on small clinics and nonprofits, and both require a compliant job description and onboarding because of certification, supervising-provider, HIPAA, and documentation requirements. As more states adopt Medicaid reimbursement, the number of small organizations making a first CHW hire keeps growing, which is exactly the scenario the small-organization template on this page is built for.
What happens after I hire a community health worker?
Send the offer, complete the paperwork, and onboard with certification and HIPAA in mind, since a CHW often handles protected health information and may need to be certified to bill. Start with the offer and get it signed, then complete Form I-9 and tax forms and your basic policies. Capture any state certification your role or Medicaid billing requires, provide HIPAA training with a signed acknowledgment, and run any background check and confirm a driver's license where home visits are part of the job. Confirm the classification, since a CHW is typically non-exempt, and set up overtime correctly. Then orient the new CHW to your community and program: the population served, your services and referral partners, the supervising-provider relationship, your documentation standards, and any grant or Medicaid reporting. For a small clinic or nonprofit without an HR department, and often working against grant or Medicaid requirements, a repeatable onboarding process keeps certification and documentation audit-ready. FirstHR handles the offer with e-signature, new-hire paperwork, an onboarding workflow, training assignments, and document management for certifications. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.