On March 16th, the Young Medical Educators (YME) Future Healthcare Leaders Club joined with 35 other youth groups in Tucson to raise awareness about bullying, and to promote youth leadership.

YME members participated in workshops to learn more about bullying and the use of the Internet and social networks as weapons to torment others.  Workshop leaders included Tucson based health professionals and high school clubs, and featured Alejandro Chavez, grandson of labor organizer Cesar Chavez, as keynote speaker.

This month SEAHEC's  pilot community health worker training pilot project will wrap up, having recruited and trained 15 farmworkers to provide work place health and safety education. Topics included dealing with workplace injuries, heat and sun safety, cold and flu prevention, First Aid/CPR, and chronic disease management. The trainings also covered children's health, nutrition and management of stress and depression.

Along with the health trainings, volunteers were versed in core competencies for community health workers, including their role in linking communities to health resources, interviewing skills and handling emergencies. Last November, SEAHEC launched the program in Winchester Heights, a farming community outside of Willcox. 

To lead the trainings, SEAHEC recruited local health educator, Ana Solis Garcia, who is from a farmworker family, and has joined the SEAHEC team. SEAHEC's Hannah Hafter provided coordination and technical support. Guest speakers included AzCHOW board member, and long time diabetes trainer, Maria Lourdes Fernandez, as well as SEAHEC's Youth Program Coordinator Mireya Velasco.

Following graduation in May, the new community health worker team will begin to reach out to their peers and employers, run their own workshops for the community, and take on projects to improve health conditions locally.

The training program is a component of SEAHEC's  Healthy Farms Initiative , which is designed to improve the health of farmworkers and their communities through community outreach, and technical support for growers in improving workplace health and safety standards. 

Last summer and fall, SEAHEC and partners trained 16 master trainers in the National Heart Lung and Blood Institutes' curricula for lay health educators.

The master trainers have since trained over 50 of their colleagues in nine counties. The project includes participants from sis agencies and four American Indian Communities. Trainings will continue throughout the Spring, with a final training offered statewide for community health workers at the 10th Annual Conference of the Arizona Community Health Outreach Workers Network (AzCHOW.)

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SEAHEC Future Healthcare Leaders Program

Submitted by Gail Emrick
The Expect More Excellence Tour highlights what Arizonans are doing all over the state to make progress toward world-class education.

The Tour celebrates the kind of world-class education we expect and believe can be available for all Arizona students. To learnmore, watch our video and vote to support us!  If we win, our clubs will receive a donation to help our students in achieving their academic and professional goals. Please express your support for SEAHEC Future Healthcare Leaders (FHL) Program.

SEAHEC’s Future Healthcare Leaders (FHL) Program prepares, encourages and assists youth from our rural border and tribal communities for careers in healthcare. Our emphasis on “Growing Our Own’ healthcare providers increases the number of youth who enter the healthcare field and increase those who are culturally and linguistically well suited to meet the needs of the population they will serve.

The FHL Program works in partnership with local high schools in rural border and tribal communities – offering high school health career clubs, known as

August 29, 2012 SEAHEC along with training partners the Arizona Coalition for Military Families, the VA, TriWest Healthcare Alliance, the Arizona National Guard and the Arizona Governor’s Council on Spinal and Head Injuries conducted a training as part of the nationwide AHEC “Veterans’ Mental Health Project” in partnership with the National AHEC Organization,  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration and the Department of Defense-funded Citizen Soldier Support Program.

The topics covered were Military/Veteran Culture, Traumatic Brain Injury & Post Traumatic Stress, Combat & Operational Stress First Aid, “Boots on the Ground,”  and Navigating Military/Veterans Systems of Care.