Community Health Apprenticeship Program at Chicago House Completes First Virtual Cohort
For three years and now with more than ten cohorts, the Community Health Apprenticeship Program (CHAP) at Chicago House has been preparing black and Latinx individuals between the ages of 18 and 34 who identify as LGBTQ+ for careers in community health and HIV/STI prevention.
In a typical six-week cohort, CHAP apprentices attend four weekly group sessions and have access to Chicago House career specialists and case managers, one-on-one meetings with CHAP program staff, and special guests from the community health field. Cohorts also embark on field trips around the city to get a feel for the diversity of jobs and workplaces under the umbrella of community health. At the end of the six weeks, graduating apprentices receive a series of certifications, including as HIV screeners, at a graduation ceremony with friends, family, and members of the Chicago House community in attendance.
This spring, as Illinoisians lived under a strict shelter-in-place order, CHAP had to quickly adapt its programming to be entirely virtual while continuing to provide apprentices with the same education as an in-person cohort.
“Offering our curriculum modules via a combination of digital literature, new video content, and group video conferencing, we’ve been able to conduct CHAP virtually,” said Matt Graham, Community Health Apprenticeship Program Manager at Chicago House. “CHAP offers our apprentices the same information, access to our Chicago House staff, and the vast majority of resources available through our organization at the same accelerated track that has been crucial in helping individuals from communities most impacted by HIV start their careers in community health.”
For the most recent CHAP cohort, this meant one weekly check-in with CHAP staff; one weekly meeting with a career specialist to work on resumes, cover letters, and interview skills; and two group meetings two to three times a week—all over Zoom. Guest lecturers gave presentations on special topics, ranging from professional development to the life cycle of the HIV virus and video tutorials on administering finger-stick HIV screens, over Zoom. CHAP’s virtual format still provided apprentices the opportunity to ask questions and network with other community health professionals as they would in an in-person cohort.
For the most part, Graham feels that this socially distanced version of CHAP was a success. Most apprentices felt that it was valuable to have something to do right now and viewed the virtual cohort as a welcome opportunity to focus on something other than the stress and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Community partners who have long been valuable participants in the CHAP curriculum were enthusiastic to continue supporting apprentices virtually via guest lectures and networking opportunities.
CHAP was able to equip this cohort’s participants with laptops, but some did encounter barriers with regular access to high-speed internet and connectivity with the cohort, as a result of being unstably housed. In previous cohorts, CHAP has sought to decrease barriers to participation in the apprenticeship program through measures such as transit incentives and loaning each participant a Chromebook. While many of these measures were still in place with virtual programming, Graham shared that guaranteeing equitable access to CHAP, in this and future cohorts, remains challenging. The reality of apprentices’ varying needs around—and access to—technology concerns Graham, as future participants will likely have to be screened based on their digital connectivity.
“From a programmatic standpoint, that bothers me, because we spent so much time trying to make this format accessible. But those barriers are very real.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, CHAP must not only anticipate the needs of this next virtual cohort, but the needs of future iterations of the program, accounting for everything from incentive delivery to increasing technological access as meeting in person remains a distant prospect. Apprentices receiving their certification may face a job market that looks vastly different from past cohorts, and Graham is interested to see how employment in the community health field pivots in response to COVID-19.
CHAP plans to hold an in-person graduation ceremony for its first virtual cohort as soon as it is safe to do so. In the meantime, the program is recruiting for its next virtual cohort, which will begin July 6th, 2020. Interested applicants can contact Matt Graham.