Making home visits, talking with people where ever they are is the way to start the trust that we must have in order for the people to trust what we are saying.

Our best practices focus on listening to the women talk to each other, providing opportunities for them to be a part of a group regardless of whether they chose to speak there, and then asking them to identify an agency where they would like to contribute some time and effort. Based on these experiences the listening continues and is related to the eight CHW core competenies.

Best practices for CHWs under what circumstances? This was the question of a group of CHWs who are working in a hospital and community based clinic settings. Because the clients and their needs varied so widely from one day to the next, it was hard for the CHWs to know where to focus their practice. After a great deal of brain storming, story telling and reflection, the best practice actions that emerged were those relevant for the moment to the person. The group concluded that the best standards of practice were the eight core competenices. If each CHW could identify one of more of these competencies used with the client, they became more confident that they had done the best job for that client within that setting and circumstances.

Lists of referral resources, especially organized at the health care site through the computer proved to be the best way to make referrals and to keep up with referral changes. It was recognized that every one needed to make regular entrys to check the site before making the referral and to add comments as needed relevant to agency changes.

Home address


An example of an advocacy letter.

Dear (provide name of person and/or office held if writing to an elected official):

I live in your (indicate relationship to the person. Is it at the state or congressational district.) My concern is (indicate issue or legislation).

State your relation to the issue or legislation and why you are qualified to speak about it.

State what you want the individual or elected official to do

I ask you to please take strong action immediately, not only for me, but for our communities. Please keep me informed of your efforts in this regard.


Sincerely,

(your name)

See the following audio-video blog site http://video-voice.org/blog. Terrific way to get out the stories of CHWs. It also includes Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) strategies.

Hurrah for participatory learning. Fifteen CHW Instructors completed 10 hours of CEUs whose learning was based on participatory and collaborative learning. The first thing the group did was rearrange the seats to face the board, although the chairs had been arranged to face each other. When asked to rearrange the chairs so everyone could see everyone else the question became "why?" What a wonderful opening opportunity to explain the first step in participatory learning, eveyone is able to look at everyone else.

Comments at the end of the learning indicated that the participatory, interactive and experiential learning had been meaningful to each student because each became involved in the learning, memorable because each student was expected and wanted to contribute from their experiences, and motivational because each student discovered new ideas, teaching and learning strategies back to their work.

PBS will be featuring a four week series on the relationship of health status, social and economic factors and health care in 2008. View these interesting stories on March 27, 2008, April 03, April 10 and April 17, 2008. The title of the series is "Unnatural Causes". A website is being developed to give more details.

"A Viable Rural Health Care Model," includes the use of community health workers. Check it out at www.trha.org

Who's thinking about how to design an effective CHW curriculum?

What would be the assumptions for such a curriculum?

I look forward to this being an interesting conversation.

Check out the recent TV and print stories about Dr. Paul Farmer. His very successful HIV/AIDS program in Haiti was saved because he included community health workers as lab techs,DOT observers and outreach workers who brought medication to those who could not make the long journey to a clinic.