The Community Health Advocate (CHA) Program at Salishan in Tacoma, WA is a partnership between Healthy Gen, the Tacoma Housing Authority, the Salishan Community Association, and residents. Neighborhood-based CHAs are leaders with a strong connection with their community. The Salishan CHA Program works to strengthen grassroots health promotion initiatives and outreach, improve health knowledge and behavior, build community, and enable residents to access available health resources. Residents can join bike and walking clubs, socialize over bingo, grow fruits and vegetables in community gardens, find group support in managing chronic disease, and voice concerns to decision makers.

CHAs also lead efforts to address food security, housing fairness, and other systems issues. The program facilitates engagement of low-income, underserved people in processes that usually see little representation from those impacted directly by policy. United with the Community Health Worker (CHW) Collaborative of Pierce County, CHAs are catalysts for systems change that profoundly affect health disparities. Through collective empowerment, CHAs help make meaning of data, assist agencies to implement effective responses, and advocate for improvements in the social and physical environment.

The program aims to:

• Connect people to community resources.

• Provide health information, outreach, and support.

• Engage people in community health and activities.

• Help people understand health information and use it in a way that works for them.

• Advocate for their community and support them advocating for themselves.

• Empower residents to make healthy choices.