Despite progress in documenting the outcomes of Community Health Worker interventions, the lack of standardized measures to assess CHW practice has made it difficult for programs to conduct reliable evaluations, and impossible to aggregate data across programs and regions, impeding commitment to sustainable, long-term financing of CHW programs. In addition, while CHWs have sometimes been involved as data collectors, they have seldom been engaged as full partners in all stages of evaluation and research. This manuscript details the current work being done by the CI Project, demonstrating how CHWs are able to contribute to the integrity, sustainability, and viability of CHW programs through the collaborative development and adoption of a set of common process and outcome constructs and indicators for CHW practice and CHW program implementation. Keywords: community health workers, measurement, popular education, participatory evaluation, community based participatory research INTRODUCTION Measurement is inherently political. Who has the power and money to measure; what is measured and who chooses; how measurement occurs and who decides; whether or not measurement is a requirement for funding; how and by whom data are collected, collated, analyzed, interpreted and presented—all of these questions reflect ideologies and relationships to power. As scholars in the movement to decolonize research and practitioners of various strands of participatory research have made clear (1, 2), what were previously thought of (by those in power) as value-free, objective decisions, are anything but. This is particularly true in the case of measurement and evaluation in the Community Health Worker (CHW) profession. CHWs are trusted community members who work with others in their community and use a range of approaches to improve health and equity (3). As predominantly members of marginalized communities where health inequities are greatest, CHWs (who use titles including Community Health Representatives in Native/American Indian communities and Promotores/as in Latinx communities) experience the same oppression and denial of power experienced by their broader communities. Historically and still today, this has included the denial of power to identify research and evaluation questions, and design, conduct, and disseminate research and evaluation studies.
