Community health workers (CHWs) are lay health workers who are part of or closely affiliated with the communities that they serve. A large body of evidence demonstrates that CHW-delivered interventions improve health outcomes and reduce disparities across a range of conditions. CHWs work in various settings, including community organizations, educational institutions, health facilities, and health departments. In the United States, CHWs are increasingly integrated into clinical settings. Their integration into clinical settings may be beneficial because they can help patients navigate care, improve cultural competency among the team, and provide health education to complement messaging from healthcare providers. However, CHWs are not always integrated effectively into clinical care teams. This may increase CHWs’ stress and burnout, reduce their potential to support patients, and exacerbate disparities within the workforce. The proposed study will use an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to: 1) Explore how CHWs are integrated into clinics, 2) Identify patterns of perceived stress and professional quality of life among CHWs in different work settings, 3) Generate a model of implementation best practices to foster CHW professional quality of life and integration into clinical settings. This application will leverage support from the Mid-Atlantic Center for Cardiometabolic Health (MACCH), a P50 grant from NIMHD that includes efforts to integrate CHWs into care teams to improve cardiometabolic health in Maryland. Ms. Shannon Fuller is a PhD candidate in social and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She seeks this fellowship to receive training in rigorous community-engaged and participatory research to complete the proposed research study with support from her mentorship team. Her training plan includes didactic and experiential training in community-engaged research, ethnographic methods, organizational behavior and theory, survey collection and analysis, advanced quantitative and mixed methods, grant writing, and dissemination. With the support of a robust mentorship team (Sponsor: Dr. Lisa A. Cooper), the proposed research and training activities will help Ms. Fuller develop into an independent researcher dedicated to advancing the dissemination of evidence-based interventions that reduce population-level disparities and support the health workforce. The proposed application aligns with NIMHD’s interest in understanding and addressing health disparities that occur within the context of health care settings and to improve the quality of care.