Baltimore: Fighting Covid-19, Joblessness and Inequity with One Innovative Project

The annual salaries range from $35,000 to $80,000, and all employees receive free training, including 12-15 hours for the jobs of contact tracing and care coordination and an optional 100 hours for core community healthcare worker competencies. Those who take the optional training will be well-positioned to receive state certification as community health workers, expanding their career opportunities in a growing field.

“The economic impacts of Covid-19 are now part of our public health response here in Baltimore,” says Martin. “One of the really exciting things about this program is the way it’s been designed to both immediately improve our department’s capacity to respond to Covid-19, while also bringing new transferrable skills and steady income to individuals who may have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.”

Employees receive a healthcare stipend, and from the time of employment, the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development will provide support to help those hired identify career interests and goals, and find permanent work. Additional workforce assistance will include financial coaching, professional behavioral health support, and legal services.

“This initiative is aligned with our agency’s mission to pursue economic justice,” said Rachel Brash, a strategist with the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. “We worked with our partners to craft job descriptions and a hiring process to ensure these jobs were as inclusive as possible.” Experience as a community health worker can lead to jobs in hospitals, community health centers, substance abuse service providers, state and local health departments, and community-based organizations.

The project, which will run until June 2021, will cost $12.4 million, with 90 percent of that spent on personnel. The Foundation committed an initial $2 million and the city has made a $4.5 million commitment, tapping into its CARES Act Funds. The Foundation is working with the city to raise additional funds, and so far another 11 partners have committed to contributing.

Even before Covid-19, Baltimore faced high levels of unemployment, poverty, and violence. The median income in Baltimore was $48,840, compared to $81,868 in Maryland in 2018. Nearly a quarter of Baltimore’s residents were living in poverty, compared to about 9 percent in Maryland and 12 percent in the United States.

Baltimore’s 2019 homicide rate per capita, at 57 deaths per 100,000 residents, was fifth highest in the nation. Additionally, wide disparities exist in health care, and life expectancy varies by as much as 20 years depending on zip code. In Baltimore, 12 percent of coronavirus patients whose ethnicity is known are Hispanic, while they make up 5.49 percent of the population. City officials acknowledge this is an undercount because 41 percent of cases are missing ethnicity data. Baltimore is 61.3 percent African-American alone, and 27.7 percent white alone.

Challenges in setting up the program included the need to work across departments and interests more deeply than ever before. “There’s a natural tension between creating the best public health program that supports economic development, and the best economic development program that supports public health,” the city’s Hellweg said. “We’ve had a lot of group phone calls.”

An anticipated challenge will be to build community confidence while doing virtual work. Because of this, empathy and the ability to create trust are the primary skills the newly employed workers need to bring to the job.

The expected outcomes: a new sustainable career path for hundreds of Baltimoreans who come directly from the hardest hit communities, better control of the transmission of Covid-19 through a team of community health care workers and greater focus on addressing the social needs of the city’s most vulnerable.