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About the Colette Lamothe-Galette Community Health Worker Institute

The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) established the Colette Lamothe-Galette (CLG) Community Health Worker Institute through a New Jersey Department of Labor Apprenticeship program.

The goal of the Institute is to create a standardized community health worker training and certification program, resulting in a robust Community Health Worker workforce. This will allow the state to educate an emerging and critical component of its workforce – creating a needed infrastructure to support CHWs, and the institutions they serve.

Through this work, the NJDOH will create career pipelines for CHWs, enhance CHW skill sets and lead sustainable efforts to support this indispensable workforce.

The institute is named in honor of the late Colette Lamothe-Galette. 

In Memoriam

On April 4, 2020, at the beginning of National Public Health Week, New Jersey lost Colette Lamothe-Galette to complications from COVID-19.

Colette was a public health champion and hero, and one of NJ’s finest public health leaders, known to all in the public health community for dedicating her life’s work to eliminating health disparities and addressing health equity.

A native of Newark, NJ Colette served as Senior Program Manager with The Nicholson Foundation, leading early childhood and health initiatives. Prior to that she spent almost 15 years at the New Jersey Department of Health.  Her accomplishments included public health accreditation and serving as the Department’s first Director of Population Health, amongst many other accomplishments.

She represented excellence within the public health community, but her character was second to none.  She invested in people and engaged everyone that she met.  When you spoke to her, she made you feel that only you mattered.  We will miss her brilliance, her love of people and her infectious laugh.  Colette was also a wife, mother, daughter, sister, godmother, auntie and friend to all.

The state owes Colette a debt of gratitude for her contributions and service and has honored her legacy, by establishing the Colette Lamothe-Galette (CLG) Community Health Worker Institute and dedicating it to her memory.

Colette Lamothe-Galette

Community Health Worker Sustainability Efforts

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is providing expenditure authority for New Jersey state to support a set of Community Health Worker (CHW) pilots to be administered by Managed Care Organizations (MCOs).

The CHW pilots will focus on eliminating health disparities within local communities and improving health quality and equity. The pilots will include providing care coordination services and/or preventive or related services to targeted beneficiaries not otherwise covered under the managed care contract, provided there are no duplication of funds. MCOs will develop and submit a focused proposal to the state for review and approval that outlines pilot interventions centered on beneficiary education, care management, and related CHW tasks along with how the pilots will be aligned with and/or integrated into the larger health care delivery system.

Total statewide annual expenditures for the CHW pilots are limited to $5 million per demonstration year. The CHW pilots will be effective through the end of demonstration period. Through outreach to underserved and low-income populations within the state by providing health education and preventive services, the implementation of the CHW pilots is expected to further the objectives of Medicaid by facilitating improved health outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries in New Jersey.

For more information view the letter from CMS approving New Jersey's request to extend and amend its Medicaid section 1115 demonstration, entitled "New Jersey FamilyCare Comprehensive Demonstration".