Minnesota Technical Assistance Workshop

Minnesota

Presenters

Lorenza Hernandez

Lorenza has worked for Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center - El Paso, the Office of Border Health, and the Health Education Training Centers Alliance of Texas (HETCAT) Western Region Program Office. She is currently a part-time instructor for El Paso Community College. Lorenza is a certified community health worker-Promotora de Salud and is a certified instructor for Promotores de Salud-CHW in Texas. Lorenza Hernandez sits on the Texas advisory committee with the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) for House Bill 1051 relating to the training and certification of Community Health Workers-Promotores de Salud. Mujer Obrera has recognized her for Community Development and Women's Rights Awards. Other recognitions include Hispanic Women Leadership Homenaje a La Mujer at El Paso Community College and the Secretary's Community Health Promotion Awards-U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services-Recognition for Community Leadership.

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.

Janey Skinner

Janey is the incoming director of the Regional Health Occupations Resource Center (RHORC) at City College of San Francisco (CCSF). In this role, she works with community colleges and employers to develop and diversify the health workforce. As a curriculum developer, instructor/trainer, and evaluator, she has worked with community health workers (CHWs) for some time. At CCSF she has supported the CHW Certificate program, a national model, and its articulation with a new A.S. degree program. She is currently on the board of the Latina Center in Richmond, CA, where among other things she conducted an evaluation of a grassroots CHW program focused on mental health. For over two decades she has worked with organizations and institutions at the intersections of adult education, public health, community mobilization and leadership development in both the U.S. and Latin America. She has written handbooks on evaluation, community action, media and alliance-building. She joined City College as an instructor in the Health Education and Community Health Studies department in 2004, where she led a collaborative design of a new Associate degree, developed new courses and participated in the creation of a Trauma Prevention and Recovery Certificate program. She received her Masters in Public Health in Community Health Education from U.C. Berkeley.

Cynthia Thomas

Cynthia is a lifelong community advocate, who received a basic CHW certificate from Pima Community College via the FIPSE-supported Project Jump Start Program in Arizona. She co-founded the Arizona Community Health Outreach Workers Network, Inc. (AzCHOW) in Tucson, Arizona in 2001, and she was elected co-vice president at the 2006 annual AzCHOW business meeting. AzCHOW is an Arizona Corporation and is finalizing steps to receive non-profit IRS 501(c) (3) status. Cynthia currently serves as a member of the Community Health Worker National Education Collaborative (CHW-NEC) Advisory Council. For the past nine years, Cynthia has taught life skills, basic nutrition, and exercise fundamentals for adults with developmental disabilities. Her goal for clients within that field is the same goal she wishes for everyone: "to be full members of a community regardless of disabilities or education, in spite of barriers and negativity." Cynthia believes strongly in celebrating diversity while encouraging individualism. She considers the combination of experience, education, and knowledge of CHWs locally, statewide, and across the country to be a source of unity and strength for all CHWs in service to their communities.

Cindy Tsai

Community Health Works San Francisco State University 1250 Adison Street, Suite 109 Berkley, CA 94703 cystsai@sfsu.edu

Cindy is the Director of Special Projects and Training for Community Health Works, a joint program of San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco. Founded in 1992, Community Health Works serves to link colleges and universities with communities to eliminate health inequalities. Working side-by-side with community partners, Community Health Works developed the first college-supported community health worker certificate program that combines performance based and popular education approaches. The certificate program is now fully institutionalized at City College of San Francisco. Using her background in public health and urban adult education, Cindy worked with a dynamic team to develop the community health worker curriculum and performance exam, and she is currently working on the first community health worker textbook. The textbook hopes to not only provide information on basic skills for community health workers, but to also examine social injustice as the key cause to health inequalities and how community organizing and mobilization affects the health of communities. Cindy has also written many training manuals and curricula, most notable the comprehensive community health worker manual for the YES WE CAN Asthma Toolkit, which, recently highlighted by CDC, has one of six effective interventions for asthma management. Her recent areas of work include: development and piloting of a health and social justice documentary film class at SFSU, policy for community health worker reimbursement for chronic disease management and the development of online education modules. Her personal/professional interest is working to make healthy places for California"s growth by examining built environment and how it intersects with public health.