Community Health Worker
47,231 active US providers register Community Health Worker as their primary taxonomy. That is 0.5% of every provider in the registry, and the 47th largest of 584 specialties with a page here.
- Taxonomy code
- 172V00000X
- Grouping
- Other Service Providers
- Classification
- Community Health Worker
- Active providers
- 47,231
- States covered
- 51 of 51
What the code means
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 of these practitioners are Community Health Aides or Practitioners established under 25 USC 1616 (l) under HHS, Indian Health Service, Public Health Service.
Definition quoted verbatim from the NUCC Health Care Provider Taxonomy code set, version 25.1. Not paraphrased.
Where they are
Counted by practice location, not by mailing address or by licence state. A provider practising across a state line is counted where they practise.
| State | Providers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| California | 11,380 | |
| West Virginia | 4,175 | |
| Utah | 4,072 | |
| Ohio | 3,830 | |
| Michigan | 2,826 | |
| Alaska | 2,286 | |
| Kentucky | 1,684 | |
| New Mexico | 1,420 | |
| Wyoming | 1,310 | |
| Oregon | 1,219 | |
| Nevada | 1,125 | |
| Washington | 1,062 | |
| Texas | 966 | |
| New York | 923 | |
| Massachusetts | 775 |
Showing the 15 largest of 51 states with at least one.
Who registers under this code
45,810 of these are people and 1,421 are organisations, so 3% of the code is businesses rather than clinicians. Half of them had registered by 2022, and 29,681 registered in the last five years, 63% of the current population.
That is a fast-growing code. A population where a large share registered recently is either a genuinely expanding field or a category NPPES added late, and the taxonomy definition above usually tells you which.
Where the practices are
By practice-location city. City counts are noisier than state counts, because a large employer files one address for many providers.
- CHARLESTON, WV1,709
- SAN FRANCISCO, CA1,697
- SALT LAKE CITY, UT1,659
- PRESTONSBURG, KY1,162
- LOS ANGELES, CA948
- LARAMIE, WY684
- COLUMBUS, OH676
- CLEVELAND, OH646
- WASHINGTON, DC640
- ST GEORGE, UT632
What else they list
Providers whose primary code is Community Health Worker most often carry these secondary taxonomies as well. This is the closest thing the registry has to a map of which specialties overlap in practice, and it is not published anywhere else.
| Also listed | Providers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Case Manager/Care Coordinator | 2,414 | 5.1% |
| Mental Health Counselor | 544 | 1.2% |
| Counselor | 501 | 1.1% |
| Behavior Technician | 457 | 1.0% |
| Peer Specialist | 335 | 0.7% |
| Day Training/Habilitation Specialist | 329 | 0.7% |
| Addiction (Substance Use Disorder) Counselor | 259 | 0.5% |
| Rehabilitation Practitioner | 250 | 0.5% |
Looking up a specific provider
These counts come from the monthly NPPES file. To check one provider, use their NPI: the lookup reads the live registry and shows whether the identifier is still active, which the monthly file cannot tell you about the last few weeks.
Counts from npidata_pfile_20050523-20260712.csv, built 2026-08-09. Primary taxonomy only, deactivated identifiers excluded.