SAN DIEGO — A new UC San Diego program aims to increase access to healthcare services in underserved neighborhoods.
This program aims to train individuals to become community health workers to reduce health disparities that negatively impact communities.
"It is to train community health workers to fill in the gap in their communities," said Wael Al-Delaimy, M.D., Ph.D., professor at UC San Diego.
To become a community worker, you don’t need to have a medical or public health background. The program aims to train 200 people over the next three years.
"They are trained to communicate facts about public health prevention, access, and health care systems," added Al-Delaimy.
Al-Delaimy, a professor of public health, says the new form of outreach will target minority, low-income, and immigrant communities, including Middle Eastern, East African, and Native American communities.
"These communities of recent immigrants, refugees, as well as Native Americans have more or less fallen through the cracks," he added.
He says the pandemic highlighted the need for more community outreach and that critical information can often be easily lost due to language and cultural barriers, saying, "that has led them to be behind in terms of vaccination, in terms of access to health care, mental health, everything else you can think of."
The program will provide all-expenses-paid training. Enrollment is now open.
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