Closing Reflections

Tucson

Presenters

Donald E. Proulx

Director of the FIPSE Funded "National Community of Practice for College Responsive CHW Education," also known as "The Community Health Worker-National Education Collaborative (CHW-NEC)" University of Arizona Area Health Education Centers Program 1834 East Mabel St. Tucson, AZ 85721 phone:(520) 626-4026 dproulx@u.arizona.edu

With the University of Arizona, Don served as the director of the Arizona Border Health Education and Training Centers (HETCs) program. This program addressed health personnel and consumer training, with an emphasis in border public health issues. Training was included for community health workers, known as promotores. Promotores are integral to effective border health services outreach, and they are included in interdisciplinary health professions student teams. Cross-border and bi-national programs were included in the work of the HETCs to address health disparities and access to care issues unique to the border region. Mr. Proulx now serves as associate director of the Arizona Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program, and he is the principal investigator and co-director of the Community Health Worker National Education Collaborative, funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Dept. of Education. A higher education and microbiology graduate of the University of Arizona, the emphasis of Don's graduate work in higher education was in curriculum and instruction. Mr. Proulx has served the Arizona AHEC program since 1989 both as a founding center (AHEC) director and as the Arizona AHEC Program associate director. Don served as instructional dean and district director for all the Health Sciences Programs with Pima Community College in Tucson for 15 years (1970-85). He was field director, stationed at Pan American University in Texas, for Project HOPE's Southwest Mexican Border Health Workforce Development Program from 1985-88. This program collaborated with nine institutions of higher education all along the Mexican border region from Texas to California to develop, implement, and evaluate accredited programs in nursing and allied health disciplines, include community health workers/promotores. Project HOPE provided recruitment, retention, and placement services for border area Hispanic students indigenous to the border neighborhoods; the project improved border area Hispanic representation in the delivery of health and human services.

E. Lee Rosenthal

Co-director of the CHW-NEC Project Assistant Professor, College of Health Sciences University of Texas at El Paso 1101 N. Campbell Street El Paso, TX 79902 (915) 747-8233 Cell: (520) 909-0262 Fax: (915) 747-8315 elrosenthal@utep.edu

Lee is an Assistant Professor in Health Promotion at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her interests include community-based public health research projects and a broad array of community health worker program research and field development efforts throughout the United States. She is currently co-director of the Community Health Worker National Education Collaborative and an associate scientist to a Community Health Worker National Workforce Study; both projects are federally funded. She also serves as a co-investigator on a newly funded study entitled: "Can Promotores Change Clinical Outcomes for Chronic Disease?" This was funded in fall 2005 by the National Institute's of Health National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Recent research areas have included an analysis of rural domestic violence issues facing rural Pima County immigrants at the Arizona-Mexico border as well as work exploring ways to strengthen migrant farm worker CHW/promotora programs along the U.S.-Mexico border. Among her most notable accomplishments is her work as the director/initiator of the National Community Health Advisor Study (University of Arizona, 1998) and as consultant/initiator of the Community Health Worker Evaluation Tool Kit (University of Arizona, 2000); both projects were funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Lee has served on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and was instrumental in the development of the Community Health Worker Special Primary Interest Group of the APHA. She served as an advisory committee member of the national Center for Sustainable Health Outreach throughout its five years of federal funding. Lee also served as a member of the National Expert Panel to the Health Resources and Services Administration's Evaluation of Community Health Workers. Currently she has joined El Paso Community College's Community Health Worker Program Advisory Council and the Health Advisory Committee of the El Paso Independent School District. Dr. Rosenthal's Ph.D. was completed with the University of Massachusetts at Boston; her dissertation is entitled "The Sustainability Dance: Lessons to Learn for an Emerging Force in Community Health-Community Health Workers." Her Master's degree in Public Health with a specialty in policy and administration is from the University of California at Berkeley.