An initiative to build trust in healthcare will be boosted by a $1 million grant from Harris County Public Health (HCPH).
The University of Houston’s Community Health Worker Initiative focuses on supporting local communities with little to no healthcare information.
“Harris County Public Health is proud to provide this financial investment to the University of Houston to support the expansion of their Community Health Workers Initiative,” HCPH Executive Director Barbie Robinson said in a press release. “As the Public Health Strategist for the county, HCPH recognizes the importance of developing a strong local workforce for community health workers. Our investment will directly contribute to the University’s efforts to recruit, train, and employ a diverse community health worker workforce that will have lasting impacts on the neighborhood and communities within Harris County and across the region.”
The Initiative’s Director, Daniel Price, said the initiative was first created to build trust in healthcare.
“A lot of people don’t trust their doctor, they don’t trust going to the hospital is the right thing for them. And therefore, they end up with worse outcomes. And so, how do you create that trust and how do you create a relationship where people feel like they’re working together towards better health outcomes?” Price said.
Around 500 community health workers are already trained and Price said they hope to add 300 more with the new grant. He said these workers often work to help with language barriers or through educational campaigns.
“This is where you find the English class, this is where you sign up for healthcare access if you need healthcare access, getting your kids in the right school. These types of things are all connected in a very broad sense to health outcomes. All the ways in which those things can be changed, we’re working on,” Price said.
Price said the initiative was first founded in 2016, and has since focused on supporting residents of Galena Park, Pasadena, the East End, and the Third Ward. He said community health workers were especially important throughout the pandemic.
“Vaccination campaigns, for example, the education campaigns, and Harris County was one of the places that did that. And we were working with them at that time, they saw that there were real issues with how accountability and standardization was working across the training centers,” he said.
Price said many of their community health workers are from the communities they serve, like Erika Manriquez who was trained by the initiative.
“From my very first day working as a community health worker, I realized how important and rewarding my job was going to be,” Manriquez said in a press release. “This program has trained me from the very beginning on how to be an effective community health worker and that has allowed me to make an impact in my community and create wonderful bonds with my fellow community members. I have lived in this area for 20 years and it’s great to be able to share the knowledge I have gained through the Initiative with my community.”