Community Health Worker: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Community health workers (CHW) are lay members of communities who work either for pay or as volunteers in association with the local health care system in both urban and rural environments and usually share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status and life experiences with the community members they serve. They have been identified by many titles such as community health advisors, lay health advocates, "promotores(as), outreach educators, community health representatives, peer health promoters, and peer health educators. CHWs offer interpretation and translation services, provide culturally appropriate health education and information, assist people in receiving the care they need, give informal counseling and guidance on health behaviors, advocate for individual and community health needs, and provide some direct services such as first aid and blood pressure screening. Some examples o

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 17,896 of the 47,282 active records, or 37.8%, have the sole-proprietor flag. That flag is a self-reported NPPES field and an imperfect proxy for private practice because CHWs may be paid employees, volunteers, or connected to community and health care organizations; it does not identify independent clinical practice.

By state

New NPI registrations by year

Counts reflect the year each NPI was first issued, among records still active today. The final year is partial: this data covers through 2026-01-11.

Data notes

• The sole-proprietor field is self-reported by the provider in NPPES and is an imperfect proxy for private practice.
• A sole-proprietor count shown as <11 is suppressed: the true value is below 11, which could include zero.
• - The count covers active NPI records using this primary taxonomy and is not a census of every person who performs community health worker work.
• - State totals reflect NPPES reporting and address data, which may not show where community health workers actually serve; taxonomy coding and updates can also change counts.
• Providers are counted once, by their primary taxonomy code only.

Source: CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) Data Dissemination file, FOIA-disclosable public data under CMS-6060-N. Aggregated by Hero EMR on 2026-08-03; deactivated NPIs excluded; specialty assigned from the primary taxonomy code (NUCC 25.1). Counts below 11 are suppressed. Individual providers are never published. All provider data pages.

Common questions