Staff – Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers

Lissette Blondet, Executive Director

Lissette Blondet is the director of the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers (MACHW). She has dedicated most of her professional life to anchoring community health workers (CHWs) as public health professionals.

In 1993, she founded the Community Health Education Center (CHEC), one of the first training and resource centers for CHWs in the country. CHEC’s standards for CHW curricula and core competencies have been replicated in other states. The program was so successful that in 1997, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health funded its expansion to the northeast region of the state. Both centers, CHEC Boston and CHEC Northeast are still thriving and have graduated over a thousand CHWs.

More recently, Lissette provided technical assistance to the Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund on community health and community health workers. She also previously served as Director of Community Benefits for Cape Cod Healthcare, focusing on making healthcare accessible to the underserved while building her experience in healthcare financing.

As the director of MACHW, Lissette brings all her experience and skills to strengthen the association and strategically position the workforce to seize the many opportunities now available through health care reform, including reimbursement and broad recognition of the attributes and competencies of CHWs.