The average lifespan of Americans has been steadily increasing over the years, resulting in a growing number of adults that live to be over 65 years old. Older adults are also becoming increasingly diverse: this population is expected to transform from 7.9% to 22% Hispanic/Latino by the year 2060. As this population grows and changes, it’s important to identify and address their unique health challenges, to support safely and happily growing old at home.
The lack of access to information and services in Spanish can prevent many Latinos from seeking care. Many CHW-led interventions recruit bi-lingual members of the community, allowing for correct interpretation of information, effective education and a way to address stigma. More importantly, it allows individuals who face language barriers the path to express their mental health concerns without fear of misinterpretation.
We are excited to announce the launch of our new training workshops. These 4-hour training sessions function similar to electives within our L.E.A.D. curriculum, which provides comprehensive training for Community Health Workers and individuals across the organizations they serve. Unlike the central curriculum, which seeks to educate and empower participants according to their role, workshops instead aim to enable an entire team within an organization to design and implement their own Community Health Worker program that addresses a specific issue within their community.
The first Community Health Workers in Michigan were trained in the 1960s to provide services to their communities. Around this time, the federal government began providing funding for community-based programs that used CHWs to reach underserved communities. Community Health Workers in Michigan and across the country began having an impact on the national level when in 1978, CHWs formed the New Professionals Special Primary Interest Group in the American Public Health Association (APHA).
Last week, one of MHP Salud's co-founders celebrated her 100th birthday. This coincides with MHP Salud's 35th year of service. Read more about the history of our organization and the story behind the amazing woman who founded it.
MHP Salud’s history is characterized by cycles of empowerment. Three people foundational to enacting these cycles were Sisters of Mercy Mary Maurita Sengelaub and Judith Mouch and former migrant farmworker Genoveva Martinez. From modest beginnings, they ignited thirty-three years of health programming, spanning the entire country to aide not only farmworkers in the Midwest, but underserved Latinos coast-to-coast.
This free budget template is presented as a sample, based on a year-round program with four full-time Community Health Workers. It is provided as a starting point to give you an idea of the line items and categories of expenses that you will want to consider in planning your budget. Many, if not all, of the amounts, will vary based on your location, organization, staffing required to implement the program, etc.
This Supervisor’s Manual was developed to provide basic guidelines to supervisors of Promotor y Promotora de Salud programs. A variety of people, with different supervisory experience, might supervise a Promotor(a)program. They could range from newly-hired Program Coordinators to Program Directors and Outreach Coordinators. Regardless of the position and the person’s experience, we hope the information in this Manual proves helpful in learning about and managing the successes and challenges of working with Promotores(as).
Over the decades that MHP Salud has championed the Community Health Worker (CHW) model, the model has retained its core elements of community-centered care and empowerment, but recent years’ rapid technological change has given CHWs new tools they can use to broaden and deepen their impact on their community.
With training, information and resources, Peer Advocates improve the health of their communities by: addressing difficult topics that influence our individual and community options, educating our peers about the positive and negative consequences of our choices, linking peers and their families to mentoring, health care and social services, and working as advocates that mobilize for positive change.
