Community Health Worker Training and local capacity building to promote health and prevent disease.

COVID education and outreach through building local community health worker (CHW) workforce:

In July, 2021, SEAHEC was awarded a $1,000,000 grant from the US Department of Health & Human Services, Health Resources Services Administration.  SEAHEC will partner with five organizations including: The Arizona Community Health Worker Association – AzCHOW, a state-wide CHW association; two federally qualified health centers – Canyonlands Healthcare and Mariposa Community Health Center; Catholic Community Services/Casa Alitas – a social services agency and Pinal Hispanic Counsel, a behavioral health agency. SEAHEC, and three of its five partners will hire, train, supervise and evaluate a total of 12 CHWs who will be deployed to promote covid-19 vaccination among the most vulnerable groups in the six-county region.

These include: Gila, Graham, Greenlee, Pima, Pinal, and Santa Cruz counties in Southeastern and Central Arizona.; counties were selected due to their high social vulnerability per the CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Strategies of Proyecto Juntos will include:

• Outreach to identify unvaccinated individuals;
• Share information about how and where to get vaccinated;
• Education to decrease vaccine hesitancy; and
• Help plan, promote and staff vaccine events.

Vacunas Para Todos: 

A Pilot Project for Migrant Care Coordination & COVID prevention

In June, 2021, SEAHEC and its partner Casa Alitas Shelter, in Tucson, received a CDC Foundation grant to support COVID education for migrant communities. Through this grant, SEAHEC is training Community Health Workers at Alitas to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate education and support to migrants and their sponsor families, addressing vaccine hesitancy and connecting migrants to a health center or health department in their destination community where a “health care home” can be established.  SEAHEC is working with a network of other AHEC centers around the U.S. in top destination communities for migrants, in order to provide health care continuity, among other services. These include:   Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island AHEC; Mid Rio Grande Border AHEC; Capitol AHEC and Miami/Dade AHEC.  It is our hope that legal and behavioral health service providers and agencies will join us in this effort to support migrant families throughout their journey.

Arizona Community Health Workers’ Network

In 2014, the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awarded SEAHEC our second Network Planning Grant in two years.

The aim of the newly launched Arizona Community Health Workers Network was to build a coalition to create a state-wide network to support Arizona’s Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce. Despite Arizona’s long history of community health worker “CHW” advocacy and research, the CHW occupation remains a poorly understood and underutilized resource in Arizona’s healthcare industry. By uniting rural and regional CHW interest groups across ethnic, racial and geographic sectors in Arizona, the Network is increasing access to care by enhancing the capacity and integration of the CHW workforce in primary care and health promotion.

Our broad based network represents community health workers, their employers and diverse members of the health care community. Through developing a community health worker workforce that is both sustainable and integrated into health care teams, we address our most pressing issues of access to health care for the most disadvantaged residents of Arizona.

The benefits of the Network are being felt state-wide, as the work of our diverse agencies with broad scope and reach help transform the way in which health services are offered.

Santa Cruz County Opioid Action Initiative

Santa Cruz County Opioid Action Initiative Consortium aka SOSA Consortium- Substance Misuse/Opioid Misuse Prevention, Referral and Treatment:

Funded by HRSA Rural Communities Opioid Response Program – Implementation (RCORP-I) Mariposa Community Health Center lead agency with many partnering agencies doing: prevention, treatment, health workforce training related to behavioral health and SUD/OUD.

The purpose of this grant is to collaborate across community sectors to increase availability of and access to culturally and linguistically appropriate services to prevent, treat and recover from substance use disorder (SUD) and especially opioid use disorder (OUD).

SEAHEC conducted assessment of health care provider SUD-OUD training needs, researched best practices in behavioral health integration with primary care and is providing continuing medical education for multiple levels of medical providers and other professionals, training providers on alternative pain management modalities to reduce the use of prescription opioids. SEAHEC is working with Santa Cruz County Provisional College District and University of Arizona Santa Cruz to offer coursework needed by students pursuing health careers, social work, and counseling.

In 2019, the Santa Cruz County Overcoming Substance Addiction Consortium (SOSA) initiated a network of organizations to engage in treatment, recovery, and awareness around psychostimulants, and substance use disorders, SUD to reduce stigma and heal the community. 

The stigma behind mental health issues and substance use is high in both rural and border communities, due to these communities being close-knit, drastically affecting the anonymity of those seeking help. Leading our communities to suffer from untreated mental health issues, and increasing substance abuse.

SEAHEC, Mariposa Community Health Center with the SOSA Consortium, created innovative ways to increase the reduction of stigma, through storytelling. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to influence, teach, and inspire. Forging connections among people and ideas passing on culture, history, and values that unite people. Our border communities and families understand intuitively that the stories we share are an essential part of the ties that bind us and build trust. 

In this digital story, our community members tell stories about their lived experiences and where they are now. Using culturally and linguistically appropriate vocabulary that our community could relate to and understand. Seeing a familiar face helps reduce the stigma and increases awareness.

As part of our SUD awareness campaign, this digital story was shared with local partners and community members. Since then, it has Influenced future initiatives. Partners and community members are more aware of treatment and other resources in our community. We have confronted the major barriers against SUD within our community by using culturally-linguistic appropriate services to educate our communities and key stakeholders by offering virtual and in-person workshops, training, digital storytelling, and other educational material. 

JTED High School based Career & Technical Service Learning for Health Careers

This new initiative of Pima County JTED Program and SEAHEC offers high school students the opportunity to learn about the vast array of health careers available while participating in “hands on” experiential learning with locally based and designed community service projects.

Arizona Healthy Hearts Initiative

In January 2012, SEAHEC and partners launched the Arizona Healthy Hearts Initiative, a first step in building a broad based community health worker collaboration network. The network links Arizona’s American Indian Community Health Representatives and Latino Promotores de Salud, connecting them to the AzCHOW Network, and providing them with resources for collaboration. This network will provide a foundation for future community health worker work force capacity building efforts. More