Lunch & Learns

Joining a Lunch & Learn is a great way to stay up to date and connected on how Community Health Workers (CHWs) can be empowered to provide care in their communities. Registration is required for all Lunch & Learns. Register for the sessions that you would like to attend using the links below. You will receive the Zoom link upon registration. You can earn a certificate for one hour of attendance by attending a Lunch & Learn and completing the post-Lunch & Learn evaluation.

Other Events and Trainings:

May 14, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00 PM: IPHA and the National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE) are hosting a PHEd Talk. Melissa Boyette, CPH, with NBPHE will break down everything you need to know about the Certified in Public Health (CPH) exam—from eligibility and content areas to the exam format and trusted study tools. 

May 15 and 16, 2026: Join Triage Health for a free, virtual conference on May 15 and 16. The conference will cover information, tools, and support needed to tackle the legal, financial, and practical challenges that can come with chronic or serious medical conditions, like cancer.

May 19, 2026, 9:00 – 10:00 AM: Join IPHA for a webinar in the Maternal Child Health ACEs Series. Nura Elmagbari, MS, with The Healing Trauma Institute, will be presenting on practical, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive strategies for conducting ACEs assessments with vulnerable mothers, children, and teens. We will explore how to move beyond checklist-based screening toward relationship-centered approaches that prioritize trust, dignity, and emotional safety.

Will-Grundy Medical Clinic and the Public Health Liaison Program

Will-Grundy Medical Clinic (WGMC) is a free and charitable medical clinic located in Joliet, IL serving the surrounding communities of Will, Grundy, and Kendall Counties. WGMC’s Public Health Liaison Program (PHLP) is a CHW-led initiative that integrates Community Health Workers across clinical, hospital, and community settings. The program deploys CHWs to address social determinants of health through direct patient engagement, resource navigation, care coordination, and community outreach. PHLP is currently expanding through a hospital emergency department (ED) integration pilot with a local health system, embedding CHWs in the ED to connect high-utilizing patients with wraparound services and reduce avoidable readmissions.

PHLP’s CHW team conducts outreach and care coordination across multiple touchpoints. In the clinical setting, CHWs support patients with chronic disease self-management, appointment follow-up, and resource referrals. In the community, CHWs complete point-of-care testing for blood pressure, lipids, cholesterol, and A1C. They facilitate health education, lead engagement events, and connect residents to food access programs, housing assistance, behavioral health services, and reentry support resources. The program is also building a hospital-based CHW presence through an ED integration pilot, where CHWs will engage patients presenting with non-emergent or socially complex needs and link them to primary care and community-based services. CHW staff receive ongoing professional development including Motivational Interviewing, de-escalation, Chronic Disease Self-Management Education, and Trauma-Informed Care training.

PHLP is positively impacting CHWs by investing in their professional growth and expanding the scope of settings in which they operate. By pursuing grant-funded training in evidence-based competencies such as Motivational Interviewing and Trauma-Informed Care, the program ensures CHWs are equipped with skills that elevate their practice and career trajectories. The ED integration pilot creates new professional pathways for CHWs in hospital environments, positioning them as essential members of interdisciplinary care teams. PHLP also strengthens CHW capacity by developing standardized workflows, data tracking tools, and internal policies that support consistent, high-quality service delivery across all program sites.

To learn more about Will-Grundy Medical Clinic, visit their website.

From Transportation to Care Access: The Evolution of Kaizen Health

When Mindi Knebel founded Kaizen Health in 2016, the idea didn’t start with a business plan—it started with a pattern she couldn’t ignore.

Across both her personal life and professional work, one word kept surfacing: Access.

While working on the Healthy Chicago 2.0 initiative with the Chicago Department of Public Health, Mindi saw how deeply access shaped people’s lives—not just access to healthcare, but to work, education, food, and housing. These same barriers showed up again and again in her life - at the same time, her own family was living that reality in two very different ways.

Two Stories, One System Failure

In northwest Iowa, Mindi’s aunt, Kim, was living with multiple sclerosis. She was living at home and needed regular physical therapy to maintain her quality of life. But she didn’t drive, and while she qualified for Medicaid transportation, the options were limited, inconsistent, and difficult to coordinate.

Her family stepped in where they could—but like many families, they were balancing jobs and responsibilities of their own. Eventually, the barriers compounded to a breaking point. Despite wanting to remain independent, Kim moved into a nursing home—not because she needed that level of care, but because it was the only reliable way to access the services she depended on.

In the Chicago suburbs, Mindi’s mother-in-law, Sam, faced a very different—but equally revealing—challenge. Diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer at 55, Sam had what many would consider every advantage: a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plan, a full-time job, financial resources, a car, and fierce independence.

But when treatment began, everything changed. The physical toll of chemotherapy made it unsafe for her to drive herself. And like many people navigating serious illness, coordinating consistent, reliable rides during an already overwhelming time became a challenge.

Two women. Completely different situations on paper. Same outcome: care was only accessible if someone could physically get them there—and if someone was paying attention to what was happening in between. Even with resources, access wasn’t guaranteed.

The Realization: Transportation Was Just the Beginning

These experiences highlighted a deeper truth: The healthcare system is highly coordinated inside the clinic—but largely uncoordinated outside of it.

That realization led to the founding of Kaizen Health, initially focused on solving one of the most visible barriers: transportation.

A Moment That Changed the Model

As Kaizen Health scaled, another insight emerged—not from strategy sessions, but from the field.

One member was being transported to pain treatment four to five times per week, often with the same driver. Over time, trust formed—as it often does between Transportation Partners and the people they serve.

One day, the driver helped her carry groceries into her studio apartment. Inside, there was almost no furniture—just a small kitchen table and a partially inflated air mattress. When the driver asked if that was where she slept, she said yes.

The driver knew that while this wasn’t the sole cause of her condition, it certainly wasn’t helping. The driver alerted the Kaizen Health team, who contacted the health plan. Within a week, the member had a proper bed. Within a few months, her condition improved to the point where she only needed maintenance-level visits every few weeks instead of multiple times per week.

It was a better outcome for the member—and a significantly lower cost for the healthcare system. But more importantly, it revealed something critical: The people closest to the patient often see what the system cannot.

This is exactly the insight the Community Health Worker (CHW) field has been built on for decades. CHWs are trusted members of the communities they serve—people who can walk into a home, notice the air mattress, ask the right question, and bridge what they see back to the care team. They surface needs that never make it into a chart: food insecurity, housing instability, isolation, fear, mistrust of the system. What the driver did in that moment, CHWs do every day—formally, relationally, and at scale.

Evolving Into Care Access Infrastructure

That moment—and many like it—helped shape Kaizen Health’s next chapter. Today, the company is evolving beyond transportation into a broader care access platform, with CHWs and caregiving support at its core.

The model works because the pieces reinforce each other. Transportation Partners, who build trusted relationships with members, are uniquely positioned to surface unmet needs. CHWs translate those signals into sustained support—connecting members to resources, following up between visits, advocating inside systems that are difficult to navigate alone, and building the kind of relationship that makes a care plan actually workable in real life.

Kaizen Health’s role isn’t to reinvent that work—it’s to build the infrastructure that lets it scale. CHWs have been holding the last mile of healthcare together for decades, often under-resourced and under-recognized. The opportunity now is to elevate that work and make it a core, funded part of how care gets delivered.

Extending Care into the Home

Around that human foundation, Kaizen Health is expanding into services that meet people where they are:

• At-home testing kits
• Home modifications, such as beds, accessibility improvements, and safety upgrades
• In-home health assessments
• Food and essential supply access

Each of these services matters. But none of them works on its own. A bed doesn’t help if no one notices it’s needed. A test kit doesn’t help if no one can walk a member through using it. CHWs are the thread that ties these services to the people who need them—the reason a ride becomes a completed appointment, a home modification becomes sustained independence, and a care plan becomes a lived reality instead of a document in a chart.

Looking Forward

As healthcare shifts toward value-based care, solving for access beyond the clinic is no longer optional—it’s essential. Outcomes, not encounters, are becoming the measure of success. And outcomes happen in homes, neighborhoods, and relationships, not in exam rooms.

That’s the shift CHWs have always been ready for. The rest of the system is finally catching up.

Kaizen Health’s evolution reflects that shift: from coordinating rides to orchestrating real-world care, with CHWs as essential partners in the work.

For Mindi, the mission hasn’t changed—but the scope has expanded. Transportation was the starting point. Care access is the future.

And the people who make that future real—the trusted connectors, the ones who notice what the system misses—have been here all along.

To learn more about Kaizen Health, visit their website.

The American Lunch Association and the Illinois Lung Cancer Screening Initiative

With funding provided by a grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health, the American Lung Association is increasing lung cancer screening rates among Black and Hispanic men and women, and white men, throughout Illinois. The Illinois Lung Cancer Screening team is currently highlighting Lung Health Navigators as a resource for Community Health Workers to advance this mission.

The Illinois Lung Cancer Screening Initiative integrates public health equity best practices through building awareness, reducing barriers to care, providing appropriate client support for lung cancer screening referrals, and facilitating low-dose CT (LDCT) scans for all eligible Illinois residents through dedicated Lung Health Navigators. Their bilingual Navigators work one-on-one with individuals who may be eligible for lung cancer screening, guiding them step-by-step through the entirety of the cancer care continuum. They also provide critical financial support, including covering the outstanding cost of the screening itself and arranging transportation to and from appointments. Individuals do not need to have a primary care provider or insurance to receive these services.

Organizations may be considering how this Initiative mission aligns with the work they are doing within their communities. It's easy to partner with the American Lung Association and share the importance of lung cancer screening. You might choose to share educational materials with your community, include lung cancer screening resources in a newsletter, host educational events, or establish lung cancer support groups. For more information about lung cancer screening and how this partnership can benefit those you serve, please visit: Lung.org/LCS-lnitiative. Together, by increasing lung cancer screening, we can diagnose lung cancer at earlier stages and improve early intervention to reduce morbidity and mortality rates across Illinois. For questions or to learn more, please reach out to the Illinois Lung Cancer Screening team at LCS@lung.org.

The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) recently shared important information about the new federal SNAP Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependent (ABAWD) work requirements.

Federal changes to SNAP mean ABAWDs will lose benefits on May 1, 2026, if:   

• they have received SNAP for three months, starting February 1, 2026, and  
• they have not met or were not exempt from work requirements.

The federal government expanded who is considered an ABAWD (adding 55–64-year-olds and only counting children 13 years and younger as dependents) and is subject to these new requirements.  

Customers can find out if they are an ABAWD, check if they are already meeting work requirements, see whether or not they are exempt from the new requirements – and find options to report an exemption, by using the screener here. 

Customers who must meet the new requirements can also find out how to meet them by working, volunteering, and/or participating in a training or education program and can find resources at SNAPWorkRequirements.illinois.gov.  

Customers who lose SNAP benefits may be able to regain eligibility by becoming exempt or meeting the work requirement for a 30-day period. 

IDHS has put together a communications toolkit with important resources and information for ABAWDs. This includes social media posts, newsletter content, and flyers to distribute. Click here. 

JobReadyIL is a free resource approved by IDHS as a Qualifying Work Program for the SNAP Work Requirement. Visit jobreadyil.com to:

1. Access free online job readiness training anytime
2. Earn work hours to maintain your SNAP benefits
3. Learn how to prepare for, find, and keep a job you love

Click the green button labeled “Access free online job training”. Follow the on-screen instructions to access and register for JobReadyIL. You must have a valid email address to register. If you have questions about SNAP benefits you can visit your local Family Community Resource Center (FCRC) or call the Application for Benefits Eligibility (ABE) Customer Service line at 1-800-843-6154. If you have questions about JobReadyIL, email help@jobreadyil.com.

 Have a safe month,

Tracey Smith, Associate Executive Director for Public Health Practice at IPHA, Director of the CHW Capacity Building Center and Claire Hughes, IPHA Program Manager.

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. 

We strive to keep CHWs, their employers, educators, and allies informed and connected. If you would like to contribute information for a future newsletter, please contact Mariah Menietti at mmenietti@ipha.com. We look forward to showcasing ways in which CHWs are making an impact in Illinois.