Effective Newborn Community-Outreach Recovery Engagement (ENCORE) - a culturally appropriate professional development course for community health workers

KDH Research & Communication (KDHRC) proposes to develop and evaluate Effective Newborn Community-Outreach Recovery Engagement (ENCORE), which will train community health workers (CHW) to support postpartum Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) women. ENCORE-trained CHWs will conduct outreach to postpartum BIPOC women, particularly women who no longer receive care from doulas and midwives (birth workers), filling a gap in critical postpartum time and providing a seamless transition in care for women. Maternal complications are more common in BIPOC populations than in White populations. And although many BIPOC women receive care from birth workers, BIPOC women still need support after the woman no longer receives support from the birth workers. Indeed, postpartum mothers often experience a gap in care in care during the critical postpartum period. CHWs are ideally positioned to fill this gap and educate and support postpartum BIPOC women due to deeply established connections to their communities and the proven effectiveness of CHW outreach for positive behavior change, including reaching women with health-changing information and skills-development. Therefore, ENCORE will train CHWs to conduct effective outreach to postpartum BIPOC women, supporting women to navigate barriers to health care and implement strategies to improve their mental and physical health. The ENCORE prototype will consist of the introduction and two full online course lessons with text, animatics, and rough-cut interactive learning experiences. In Phase I, we will develop the ENCORE prototype with feedback from an advisory committee in alignment with CHW best practices, the needs of postpartum BIPOC women, and scientifically accurate information. We will evaluate the ENCORE prototype in a randomized, two-group study that empirically assesses knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy among CHWs to provide support to postpartum women after prototype exposure. The Phase I project will prepare us for Phase II expansion and a rigorous randomized controlled trial of the impact of CHW outreach on postpartum BIPOC women. When complete, ENCORE will be marketed through KDHRC's robust sales system that uses email and interpersonal outreach to promote and support adoption of our suite of CHW/promotores training programs. ENCORE is innovative because it will reach an underserved, at-need population with a culturally competent intervention that will support, fill the gap in care for, and ultimately improve quality of life among postpartum BIPOC women.