Highlights from Our Community Health Workers Webinar Series

Tomorrow is the third installment of our ten-episode webinar series for promotores conducted entirely en Español, entitled Principios de Salud Pública para Promotores. The first two webinars -- ¿Que Es la Salud Pública? and Desigualdades en la Atención De La Salud -- were well attended and very highly rated. This unique series is the first webinar series of its kind in the country, providing a solid foundation for community health workers (CHWs). Check out some highlights from the first two:

Popular: For the first time ever, we ran out of space in our online webinar room. The first webinar was full with around 150 participants -- leading us to alter our systems in order to accommodate a great number of people for the rest of the series. Many of our participants are actually groups -- meaning that one computer may be logged in, but four or five people are watching from that one computer, so our true numbers are greater. Tomorrow’s webinar is slated to be just as popular: 249 people are registered.

International: We had participants from all US time zones, as well as participants from Chile, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico.

Unique and Needed: Ileana Ponce-Gonzalez, MD, MPCH, CNC is MCN’s Senior Advisor for Scientific and Strategic Planning, and the coordinator for the webinar series. This series, she says, came about because there was nothing else out there like it -- and the need was great. “MCN is a force of health justice for migrants; I say, education is the force of health justice for our CHWs,” Ileana said. “ I am proud to be the Course Coordinator and Instructor for the series, which is focused on moving our knowledge of public health from darkness to light.”

Dynamic: Our webinars are presented on Adobe Connect, which allows for participant input. Participants in the second webinar were particularly active in the chat room sidebar, asking questions, providing immediate feedback, and conversing with the presenters, which made the seminar all the more engaging and relevant.

Well-Received: Participant evaluations state that the webinars so far have been well-presented and useful.  More than half of participants of the first two webinars rated the presentations 10 out of 10! Check out some of these reviews from the first webinar:

• Excellent presentation. I am very interested in the next presentation.
• I learned a lot in this course. I will try to implement the knowledge for the benefit of this community.
• I liked how the presenter made it clear that public health is not only personal but global. It is very important to think widely because we all live in this world and what we do here on the American continents affects the other continents.
• Thank you...In our country, we do not all have the opportunity to access these conferences; it was a new experience to receive this  knowledge via internet...Personally, I will share this experience with other colleagues who have not had the opportunity to [watch the webinar]. Congratulations to the whole team that made this possible.

The second webinar’s reviews were equally glowing:

• This issue is very important because it allows us to identify the problems preventing patients from seeking medical help.
• I really like the theme of prevention and overall impact on the health and welfare of our community.
• This presentation had very good information and content.
• I am very grateful for these webinars. They are helping me a lot with all the information.

Make sure to join us for the remainder of the series by signing up here. All of our webinars, including all sessions of this series for CHWs, are archived on our website for later viewing.