DETROIT – In October 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, Nate McCaughtry realized just how fragile the line between health and crisis could be.
After days of worsening symptoms, the Wayne State University administrator climbed into his car and drove himself to the hospital, unsure whether he would return home. He spent two days in a makeshift COVID ward, listening to the sounds of a health care system being taxed to its limits.
“I said goodbye to my family with much uncertainty if I would ever be coming home,” recalled McCaughtry, professor and assistant dean of Division of Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies. “I sat there for two days and listened to all of the coughing, the wheezing, the coding, the deaths, the nonstop influx of people coming in.”
He recovered, but the experience changed how McCaughtry — who also serves as director of WSU’s Center for Health and Community Impact — thought about his work and the role universities should play in their local communities. Before that experience, much of his career centered on improving health education for children in K–12 schools.
Nate McCaughtry, director of WSU’s Center for Health and Community Impact, says community-focused trainings are essential: “If you’re going to achieve population-level health, you have to be out in the community. You can’t expect people to come to you.”
After surviving COVID, McCaughtry began thinking more urgently about the millions of adults — particularly those in underserved communities — who lack access to the kinds of support systems that help people stay healthy.
“My early degrees were to be a K–12 health and PE teacher, and then I got a special education master’s and then a kinesiology and health studies degree,” he explained. “And yes, instilling health in kids is super important. But there are so many more people who aren’t kids who need assistance — especially in vulnerable, underserved communities.”
McCaughtry’s mindset has helped shape a growing network of training programs at Wayne State University that equip residents across metro Detroit to confront some of the region’s most pressing challenges — from chronic disease and elder abuse to opioid overdoses.
But the model goes beyond traditional outreach. Wayne State trains residents to serve their communities while also learning from the people it serves.
Building a community health workforce
Community health workers serve as a bridge between clinics and communities.
“Community health workers are typically people that are in and from the community where they’re working,” McCaughtry said.
Their role extends beyond traditional health care.
“We now know nationally — and globally — that the life circumstances of individuals are one of the primary contributors to chronic disease,” he said. “Things like transportation, food access, housing — the whole nine yards.”
To that end, one of the most expansive efforts is the Community Health Worker Academy, which prepares residents to help neighbors navigate health care systems and address barriers such as food insecurity, transportation and housing. Through the academy, Wayne State has certified more than 400 community health workers — far exceeding the program’s initial goal — and trained thousands more through advanced coursework. Those workers are now embedded in churches, nonprofit organizations and neighborhood programs across the region.
Training residents to save lives
Another program focuses on the opioid epidemic. Through the AmeriCorps Community Training Program for Overdose Rescue, housed at the Center for Urban Studies, participants learn how to administer naloxone, perform CPR and recognize overdose symptoms.
“The core of what ACT does is bring in people from the university and from the community,” said the center’s director, Lyke Thompson. “We train them to go out and teach people how to end an opioid overdose using naloxone.
“We partnered with over 300 community organizations,” Thompson said. “Maybe a library, maybe a church, maybe a neighborhood organization. We call them up and say, ‘Hey, can we do another opioid training?’”
More than 6,000 people across Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties have now received the training.
“Each person has gotten Narcan, fentanyl test strips and resources,” said Ja’lea Echols, program director of the AmeriCorps Community Training Program.
Attending an overdose rescue training is about more than learning how to administer naloxone; it’s an act of community care, harm reduction and health equity, said Gage Gillard, HIV prevention specialist with Preventative Health Services at Corktown Health, which has partnered with AmeriCorps for the trainings.
“Overdose prevention carries particular urgency in LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities, where structural racism, stigma and barriers to affirming health care can increase risk while limiting access to support,” Gillard said. “Training community members with life-saving skills helps ensure someone can intervene when formal systems fail or arrive too late.”
Protecting older adults
Another Wayne State initiative focuses on preventing elder abuse, a problem that experts say often goes undetected in vulnerable populations.
Through the program, nursing faculty and staff train health care workers, nursing students and caregivers to recognize warning signs of financial exploitation, unsafe housing conditions and other risks facing older adults.
The initiative includes multiple components, ranging from continuing education for health care professionals to hands-on training for students who will go on to take the information into the community.
“We’re educating people on things like financial exploitation, hoarding and safe housing,” said research assistant Jalana Haynes. “Unfortunately, there are people out there who see older adults as easy targets, so we want to promote awareness and prevention strategies.”
Through the program’s training modules, nursing students complete at least 10 hours of coursework covering the major areas of concern in elder abuse. After completing the training, students conduct outreach at senior community centers and residential sites to share information with staff and residents about recognizing warning signs and connect older adults to resources.
The program also includes student-led outreach visits and informational campaigns aimed at older residents. In one early phase, students distributed educational materials to approximately 150 seniors outlining resources related to housing safety, mediation, financial exploitation and hoarding risks.
Additional program initiatives include interdisciplinary visits with older adults by teams of students from nursing, medicine, pharmacy and social work programs, allowing them to assess needs and connect residents to services. Haynes also works on a second grant-funded training designed to educate caregivers in the community.
“The training was an insightful conversation that provided detailed steps on how to provide proper caregiving,” said Vincent Fulton, a Detroiter who attended trainings on caring for seniors so that he could better tend to his aging mom. “The presentation gave me so much more understanding of the best ways to approach caregiving, especially for close family and friends who have dementia and other issues.”
Learning from the community
Wayne State leaders say the work is as much about listening as it is about teaching. Direct interaction with residents helps university staff refine their training methods and better understand the realities communities face.
“What we’ve learned is that simply certifying somebody through 96 hours of training is woefully insufficient for them to adequately provide services for the community,” McCaughtry said.
That realization led the academy to expand its offerings and create a massive catalog of continuing education courses and resources to help community health workers deepen their expertise. The university has also developed resource libraries and digital tools designed around the needs people describe during outreach efforts — everything from guides for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients to materials addressing health literacy and cultural differences.
Over time, those lessons have reshaped how the programs operate.
“In the beginning, every time we did a training, we learned something,” Thompson said. “We learned how people reacted, what made them comfortable and what didn’t. So, we’ve adapted over time.”
That feedback loop — teaching while learning — has become central to Wayne State’s approach to community engagement.
For McCaughtry, the lesson he carried out of the hospital years ago still holds true: real solutions require meeting people where they are. “If you’re going to achieve population-level health, you have to be out in the community,” he said. “You can’t expect people to come to you.”
