Registered Apprenticeships for Community Health Workers and Dually Certified Peer Recovery Specialist-Community Health Workers. Strategy Spotlight. Innovative Employment and Training Interventions to Address the Opioid Crisis

Community health workers (CHWs) and peer recovery specialists (PRSs) can play an important role in meeting the health care needs of people with opioid use disorder. Registered apprenticeship programs, an "earn while you learn" approach, can help build a certified workforce of CHWs and PRSs by providing classroom and on-the-job training. Apprenticeship RI, an initiative of Building Futures, develops registered apprenticeships in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Labor. With funds from the National Health Emergency (NHE) demonstration grant, Building Futures, the subgrantee, worked with two partners to develop registered apprenticeship programs for two occupations that could help address the opioid crisis: CHWs and dually certified PRS-CHWs. This strategy spotlight highlights an innovative effort, funded through an NHE Dislocated Worker Demonstration Grant to Address the Opioid Crisis to the state of Rhode Island, to develop registered apprenticeships for CHWs and dually certified PRS-CHWs. [This is the third report of a four-part series. For the second report, "Adapting Work Readiness Training for People in Recovery," see ED617846.]