2024年4月30日
Over the last eight years, 澳门真人赌场官方网站’s Community 健康 Champions program has graduated more than 360 dedicated, engaged advocates for health resources and equity in Central Texas. Many are community leaders and organizers, public health professionals and healthcare innovators, with a few regular folks who just care about healthcare. It’s been a great success.
今年, Community 健康 Champions is introducing new programs tailored to the needs of those with lived experience on the wrong side of Central Texas’ health disparities. The first class of “accelerated” Community 健康 Champions – so-named because it’s faster-paced than the traditional five-month program – spent March becoming educated and empowered about their rights to access healthcare and the resources that are available.
The class, conducted entirely in Spanish, included 18 people (17 of them women) from the St. 约翰斯的社区. They met for weekly workshops at Webb Middle School, with support from Austin Voices for Education and Youth, a nonprofit that’s based in St. 约翰 and helps and advocates for families in the neighborhood.
“我很高兴, 很兴奋, because this is the first time I get to be involved in something like this and I went all out,” Francisco Navarro 告诉我们. “I want to be able to provide more information and transmit that same enthusiasm to people, 所以他们, 太, can be participants in this truth.”
That “truth” included group exercises focused on exploring healthcare barriers and access to care. Participants learned about and discussed issues that 澳门真人赌场官方网站 is also working on, such as healthcare equity, social determinants of health, community outreach and engagement, and local clinics and services – issues that persist in areas of disinvestment like St. 约翰.
Several of the participants are Community 健康 Workers, or promotoras de salud, who work in their own communities, connecting their own neighbors to the resources available for them to care for their health. New 健康 Champ Teresa Barrera Rivera 告诉我们, “It’s important for us as health promoters to know about the resources we have.”
Another promotora in the class, Denisse Badillo-Mendoza, 告诉我们, “Now that I got help with a lot of resources, I can share them with my community. I can also now help my community with applications for MAP.”
澳门真人赌场官方网站’s Medical Access Program (MAP) and MAP Basic provided health coverage to more than 130,000 Travis County residents in 2023. That’s a lot, but it’s not everyone who needs health coverage who might qualify for MAP. One of the reasons St. 约翰 was the site of the accelerated 健康 Champions class is that the area is home to fewer MAP members than our demographers expected. That’s also true of Colony Park, which will host the next course, also in Spanish, in May.
To learn more about the Community 健康 Champions visit us online at gumeimy.com/get-involved/community-health-champions.