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26th Annual Families
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Thursday, March 2
8:15-9:30 am
Cultivating the "We-All" Factor
and Nurturing the Extended Primary Care Family
George Rust, MD, MPH, Morehouse School of Medicine
This session will provide data on gaps that arise from the “doctor-centered,
one-patient-at-a-time-in-the-exam-room” model of primary care, and will
present evidence-based models of partnerships that have been shown to make
primary care more effective.
The session will also explore the range of potential partners in primary
care, and strategies for cultivating meaningful partnerships to build robust
health care teams that include patients, professionals, families, and communities.George
Rust, MD, MPH, is a professor of family medicine and interim director of
the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine, previously
serving as deputy director of the Center under
former US Surgeon General, David Satcher, MD. He completed residency training
at Cook County Hospital
and is board certified in both family medicine and preventive medicine. In
1994, he was named Family Practice Educator of the Year by the Georgia Academy
of Family Physicians.
At Morehouse School of Medicine he has also served as acting chair of the Department of Family Medicine and founding director of the Morehouse Faculty Development program. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, monographs, and peer-reviewed research publications related to primary care and underserved populations.
Before coming to Morehouse in 1991, Dr Rust served as medical director of the West Orange Farmworkers’ Health Association in Central Florida for 6 years. Since then he has built bridges between the academic arena and the front lines of primary care by developing training programs and quality / outcomes research focused on asthma, diabetes, and depression in the Southeast Regional Clinicians’ Network, representing community and migrant health centers in eight southern states.
In leading the development of the National Center for Primary Care, Dr Rust has cultivated partnerships with state and federal agencies, foundations, academic institutions, the private sector, and frontline clinicians, in pursuit of a community-responsive, culturally relevant, team-based model of excellence in primary care.
Friday, March 3
8:15-9:30 am
Community Health Workers: Texas
and US/Mexico Border Perspectives on Practice and Policy
Donna Nichols, MSEd, CHES, Center for Policy and Innovation, Texas Department
of State Health Services, Austin; Eva Moya, LMSW, Health and Human Services/Affairs
Consultant, El Paso, Tex; Lorenza Hernandez, Texas Tech University, Office
of Border Health, El Paso, Texas
Imagine yourself in Texas as a newly arrived immigrant who does not speak English. What would you do if your child became ill? How would you find a doctor? When you find one, will he/she speak your native language or understand your culture? Who can answer your questions?
In a state of approximately 22 million people, many Texas residents,
marginalized by poverty and cultural traditions, find themselves in this
situation. To help them, some Texas communities offer the services of promotores,
or community
health workers (CHWs), who provide health education and assist with navigating
the health care delivery
system.
Promotores, a community health safety net and a natural extension of the health and human services agencies, improve health at the neighborhood level. This session will address: (1) Who CHWs or promotores are, why they are important, and what the core components of successful programs are; (2) What CHWs do, including practice profiles in caring and teaching from a border perspective; and, (3) What public health policy innovations support CHWs in Texas, including examples from the road to certification.
As the diversity of the US population increases,
and as the rate of change in health care systems accelerates, the opportunity
to expand the role grows. CHW employment
and education provides jobs to local residents, opportunities to learn
about health careers, role models for underemployed or unemployed individuals,
and leadership training. Certification brings renewed commitment
to serving others and a distinction to those who have been the unsung
heroes of public health for decades. CHWs are often vital in linking
underserved and disenfranchised clients with essential health and human
services.
Donna Nichols, MSEd, CHES, is the senior prevention policy analyst for the Center for Policy and Innovation at the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin. As the former director of public health promotion at the Texas Department of Health, she provided staff direction to the Promotore(a)/Community Health Worker Training and Certification Advisory Committee and implementation support to Senate Bill 1051 regarding mandatory training and certification of promotores(as)/community health workers. In her nearly 30-year public health career, Ms Nichols has practiced in three state health departments. She has received numerous state and national awards including the Evans/Muneoka Award, the Leadership Award, and the Health Promotion Medal of Excellence, all from the CDC/ASTDHPPHE. She is an author, presenter, and health promotion practitioner and has served on numerous professional and scientific committees.
Eva
Moya, LMSW, is a native of the El Paso/Ciudad
Juárez border region. She is a borderlander. Eva has a master
of science degree in social work from the University
of Texas at Austin and a bachelor of arts degree in social work from
the University of Texas at El Paso. With more than 23 years of professional
experience in the US-Mexico Border region, she was considered by Latino
Leaders magazine in 1994 as one of the top 10 Latinos in health care.
Her expertise includes border, binational, and cross-border health; health
diplomacy; and migrant community health education, CHWs / Promotores(as)
de Salud Program implementation and evaluation; non-governmental organizations,
health centers, and academic institutions. Ms Moya is a Kellogg
Fellow graduate and is a member of the collaborative,
donating time, effort, and ideas.
Lorenza Hernandez is a certified community
health worker—Promotora de Salud, and also a certified
instructor for promotores in the state of Texas. She is a faculty member
at Texas Tech University, and provides training and education in the
Office of Border
Health and Health Education Training Centers Alliance of Texas, West
Region Program Office. Ms. Hernandez is also a part-time instructor at
El Paso Community College. She sits on an advisory committee
to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), which was responsible
for House Bill 1051 for the training and certification of Promotores
de Salud. She has been recognized for numerous awards and achievements,
including Mujer Obrera’s Community Development and Women’s
Rights Award, the El Paso Community College Hispanic Women Leadership
Award (Homenaje a La Mujer), and the Secretary of the US Department of
Health and Human Services Community
Health Promotion Award in recognition of her community leadership.
Saturday, March 4
8:00-9:15 am
“The Case of the Missing Patient: Developing
Mechanisms for Enhanced Partnerships”
David Waters, PhD, University of Virginia
For years we have been asking more and more
of providers in virtually
every aspect of medical care, but what we ask of patients has not changed
much. Dr Waters’ current work is designed to significantly alter what
we ask and expect of patients, and to find new, cooperative ways of asking,
so as to alter the fundamental doctor-patient relationship.
Goal-oriented medical care (G-OMC) is built around moving chronic illness patients away from problem-oriented care and away from “being taken care of,” and toward care that is based on their commitment to their own functional goals. It includes specific attention to the vital leadership role of the patient as the primary person who will determine the outcome of the care. This theoretical orientation will be accompanied by recent data and information from our adventures in G-OMC.
David
Waters, PhD, left graduate school as part of the first generation of
family therapists with some actual training in family therapy, and became
an active family therapist and trainer for many years. He traveled widely
doing training groups and workshops, evolving a method built around competence
and moving away from the concept of psychopathology as the organizing principle
in therapy. He was based first in psychiatry and since 1975 in family medicine
at the University of Virginia, and trained residents in both of those
disciplines
in his approach to families. Since the late 1990s he has focused more
on innovative ways to change the ecology of the doctor-patient encounter
in his department
of family medicine.
He runs the Family Stress Clinic at the University of Virginia as part of the family medicine department, and oversees a successful collaborative care program that involves a lot of conjoint work between MDs and mental health professionals. In the last 2 years, he has been developing the concept G-OMC at the university, looking to find ways to involve patients more centrally and make them a more effective part of their own health care. That work is supported by an internal grant from the University of Virginia. He teaches in a variety of departments at the university and elsewhere, and has received numerous teaching awards.