El Sol CHW/P TC’s mission and vision revolves around preparing CHWs/Ps to fulfill their vocation to advance Health for All. This section describes how the combination of developing psycho-emotional empowerment, competence in diverse settings/roles/levels and career pathways contribute to El Sol CHW/P TC fulfilling its mission. During El Sol’s 30 year trajectory, CHWs/Ps trained by El Sol have demonstrated their effectiveness at addressing health inequities in a variety of roles and settings. This includes helping to improve adverse conditions concerning the lungs, such as asthma, improving mental health and those suffering from depression, cardiovascular health, diabetes, and obesity.

As in many communities throughout the nation (Rodriguez, 2022b), CHWs/Ps trained by El Sol were instrumental in the coordinated COVID-19 response throughout Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. El Sol CHW/P TC’s approach of building CHW/P competency in a broad range of skills/roles (using the C3 Consensus framework) while developing psycho-emotional empowerment was a key to the success. During contact tracing phone calls, CHW/P leveraged their psycho-emotional awareness skills to establish rapport with clients. In addition to contact tracing, CHWs/Ps’ roles expanded to include food distribution to those most in need, providing informal family-support counseling and mobilizing marginalized communities (e.g., farmworkers) to access available resources/services. Moreover, CHW/P addressed the misinformation circulating in the community about vaccinations through educational materials and popular songs and by co-hosting successful vaccination enrollment events with CHWs/Ps on-hand to answer questions (Garcia, 2021).