Reflections On The Year From Our Executive Director
Hello friends, partners, and supporters, Traditionally, Health Outreach Partners ends each year looking back and taking stock of our work. In the last three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of our work was virtual. While we are proud that we were able to pivot and find innovative ways to support our communities, we are thrilled that 2023 started with in-person activities. After well-deserved time off to celebrate the holidays with friends and family, HOP started the year piloting our hybrid work model. As a team, we agreed on the benefits of working together in person and after several iterations started a 2-day office work week. I’m so happy, as we end the year, that we are still coming together 2-3 times per week to collaborate, share ideas, problem solve as well as enjoy one another with a few laughs and lots of great food. After nearly three years, we hit the road traveling in 2023. Our team started January off with a trip to Columbia, South Carolina to facilitate outreach training for the South Carolina Primary Care Association. This successful event was just the start of a year that welcomed back a full travel schedule. We facilitated trainings for Blue Ridge Medical Center in Arrington, VA, the California Primary Care Association in Santa Rosa, CA, Healthcare for the Homeless/Farmworker Health Program of San Mateo Co, CA, and in Boise, ID for the Idaho Community Heath Center Association to name a few. Conference workshop presentations also returned in 2023 and HOP was ready to go! We presented at nine different events across the country. We traveled to Long Beach, CA, Orlando, FL, Chicago, IL, Seattle, WA, San Diego, CA, San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX, and Winston-Salem, NC to facilitate or participate in training workshops. Our most requested topics included Structural Competency, Ag Worker 101, Organizational Self-Care, Leadership and Communication, and Outreach and Enrollment. |
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I’d like to showcase two conference events from this long list. HOP’s Meghan Erkel joined forces with Ted Henson from the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) and Yarin Gomez from the California Primary Care Association (CPCA) to present at the Community Health Institute (CHI) sponsored by NACHC in San Diego, showcasing resources for health center enabling services staff to respond to emerging issues to increase access to comprehensive primary health care. Meghan also presented to the Commission on Agricultural Worker Health while there and partnered with NACHC to launch the first listening wall session, an innovative approach to stakeholder engagement in planning technical assistance for health centers. The second conference program I am thrilled to highlight is close to my heart, a listening session for CHWs and other outreach workers to improve cervical cancer screening rates for migrant and seasonal agricultural worker and their communities. HOP partnered with Farmworker Justice to conduct an engaging and enlightening conversation at the East Coast Migrant Stream Forum in Winston-Salem, NC on cervical cancer. We discussed barriers in the farmworker community that prevent screening and lead to an increase in cancer rates. This year, HOP committed to including outreach workers and CHWs in our program planning and design process and both these events highlighted this. We firmly believe in “Nothing for Us, Without Us” and now it is time for us, to walk the walk- not just talk. While, I could go on and on about our work this year, I want to highlight a few other projects that represent our commitment to health equity and health center communities. We published an eight-episode podcast highlighting resiliency and recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic with a 9th episode hosted by Program Manager Aba Anison-Amoo about to drop any day now… Our team updated our Outreach and Enrollment (O&E) curriculum to support health center communities in ensuring their patients maintain their healthcare coverage, with the end of the public health emergency and mandatory Medicaid re-enrollment. Meghan Erkel and Nadeen Mekhael have taken HOP’s O&E program from 2013 and updated it to support the current needs of health centers. As part of this, they included listening sessions with front-line health center workers. Lastly, we launched a new training, Motivational Interviewing: A Trauma-Informed Approach, and have received excellent evaluations from participants. To wrap up, we end this year by saying goodbye to long-time team member Liam Spurgeon, after 10 years, and welcome our new deputy director, Smruti Shah. We also hosted 8 interns, who have made significant contributions to our work, supporting our programs. Thank you to Alysa, Sara, Ushuu, Charmaine, Laura, Jacqueline, Nadeen (who works with us now!), and Christabel. We hosted our Board in Oakland for a 2-day retreat, to energize and reflect on our mission. We welcomed new Board member Sendy Sanchez. Thank you to Christina Mestas, our Executive and Board Affairs manager, for ensuring every detail was perfect for this event (especially the delicious food). Lastly, we wrapped up our 3-year HRSA funding cycle and our programs reached 5325 participants, and our resources were accessed 10,990 times -WOW! I am so grateful to work with such a brilliant and committed team. As we wind down and look forward to ending the year with our family and friends, we ask for you to support Health Outreach Partners today so we can continue our impactful work. Let’s build a future together where all people are valued and equitable access to quality health care is available to everyone, thus enriching our collective well-being. HOP Wishes You All A Very Happy Holiday Season! With Gratitude - Cindy Selmi |
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Nadeen Mekhael Program Manager, T/TA |
| Welcome to the Dream Team, Nadeen!
HOP is excited to welcome Nadeen Mekhael, our newest Program Manager, Training and Technical Assistance. Nadeen interned with us in 2022-2023 and updated HOP's Outreach and Enrollment Curriculum which is used to train health center and outreach staff to boost health coverage enrollment in their patient population. Having recently graduated from her MPH program, she brings experience in blending a theory-based approach with current best practices. She's also well traveled - having lived in 7 different cities outside the U.S. Welcome Nadeen! To learn more about Nadeen, visit our website https://outreach-partners.org/about-hop/staff/. |
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For more information regarding this project, please contact Meghan Erkel at meghan@outreach-partners.org |
| Special Olympics Health
Earlier this year, Health Outreach Partners (HOP) collaborated with Special Olympics, Inc. (SOI) to provide technical assistance in finalizing, distributing, and summarizing the Center for Inclusive Health Stakeholder Survey. The purpose of this survey is to help SOI develop tools and resources stakeholders would find most useful to help make healthcare more inclusive and accessible for those with intellectual disabilities (ID). It is clear from the data that this is a much-needed area of research, advocacy, and training. While respondents, many of whom were leaders within their organizations, reported that they have knowledge of people with ID and have received training sometime in their career, it is not enough. The conversation around people with ID is changing and health systems stakeholders are behind in acknowledging the needs and demands to treat and advocate for people with ID. HOP understands the importance of providing training and technical assistance at all levels of a health center. Given the findings, there is a clear desire and need to learn more about the unique challenges facing this population. One recommendation through this survey is that organizations and employers provide comprehensive training opportunities conducted by people with ID. A second recommendation would be to include disability, specifically ID, as a demographic question. Many organizations and health centers are still looking to incorporate more indicators in their data collection efforts, like Social Determinants of Health, and ID needs to be included in this conversation, as well. Thank you to our partners who supported this project and helped distribute the survey. |
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For questions or more information, please contact Aba Anison-Amoo at aba@outreach-partners.org. |
| Nurturing a Culture of Self-Care: Strategies for Enhancing Organizational Wellness
Health Outreach Partners invite health center staff to join in a 3-year learning collaborative consisting of 4 sessions per year. This year’s sessions will focus on exploring and developing effective strategies for establishing Self-care at the workplace by using HOP’s Organizational Self-Care Assessment Tool to address stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue.
Participants will learn to create an environment of self-care that encourages personal growth and organizational success, develop healthy habits for maintaining balance, and build a culture where employees feel supported and empowered. The sessions will be presented in English with closed captioning. For questions or more information, please contact Aba Anison-Amoo at aba@outreach-partners.org.
Date: Wednesday, January 17 & 31, February 14 & 28, 2024.
Time: 11:00am PT; 12:00pm MT; 1:00pm CT; 2:00pm ET
For Registration Link: https://bitly.ws/32kpB |
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Calendar of Events View HOP's Calendar of Events which includes upcoming trainings, webinars, conference workshops and more! View Events > |
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About Outreach Connection The Outreach Connection Newsletter is a compilation of the latest information and resources from Health Outreach Partners and our collaborators sent right to your inbox. This newsletter was designed specifically for outreach programs and staff. You can use Outreach Connection as your resource for technical assistance to enhance your outreach efforts with links to insightful and timely articles, tools, reports, and more. HOP sends newsletters with new content that is available on a regular basis, so encourage your colleagues to sign up today. We hope you find this to be a valuable resource for your program. |
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