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Lelah's Story
Lelah began suffering from asthma when she was three years old. Her quality of life was awful according to her mother, La-Tannya. She had so much trouble breathing that she missed more than 30 days of school and was even hospitalized for a short time.
Then Lelah met
Gloria Seals
, a Community Health Worker (CHW) Supervisor at Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI), and her life was transformed.
Gloria worked with Lelah and her mom, educating them on the disease, triggers, medications and appropriate use of medical devices while also developing an asthma action plan to guide both mom and Lelah on managing her asthma. Gloria worked with them to introduce “asthma-friendly” cleaning products for the home, as some of the cleaners they were using irritated Lelah’s lungs. The result was a dramatic reduction in asthma episodes and remarkable improvement in Lelah’s quality of life.
Today, Lelah receives straight A’s and rarely misses school. She has not visited the emergency room in years.
La-Tannya describes Gloria as life-saving and life-changing. La-Tannya said, “Before Gloria, my daughter and I were in the dark about her illness.
The Asthma CarePartners program
, and Gloria Seals, changed our lives.”
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CROWD travels to Iowa to train
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In December,
Fatima Padron
and
Kim Artis
traveled to Des Moines, Iowa to conduct
CROWD
’s first out-of-state CHW Core Skills training. Mercy Accountable Care Organization contracted CROWD to train their inaugural group of 6 CHWs from Kentucky and Iowa, along with 4 other project staff. One trainee shared of her experience, "Something I appreciated this week [was] the positive environment and creative way of teaching/learning."
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Fatima Padron (far left) and Kim Artis (far right) with the Mercy Accountable Care project staff
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CROWD is part of Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI) and Sinai Health System. SUHI works in partnership with community members and organizations to document disparities and improve health and wellness in vulnerable neighborhoods. SUHI conducts health disparities research, develops innovative community health interventions, delivers (via CROWD) community health worker (CHW) training and consultation, and provides a broad scope of evaluation services.
CROWD grew from SUHI’s vast leadership implementing and evaluating CHW interventions, and in the hiring, training and deployment of CHWs. Through CROWD, SUHI supports health plans, health systems, organizations, and research studies in hiring, training, supervising and evaluating CHWs.
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Why CHWs
Research has proven the effectiveness of CHWs in improving outcomes, increasing client engagement and satisfaction, and reducing costs. CHWs share a strong connection to the community they serve and are able to quickly establish trust and identify and address barriers to disease prevention and management. CHWs increase knowledge and self-sufficiency through outreach, navigation, education, counseling, social support, and advocacy.
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SUHI has utilized CHWs to address health disparities since its inception in 2000 and is a nationally recognized expert in designing CHW interventions and programs. CROWD offers a number of services to help organizations develop and implement CHW solutions:
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Hiring
Help identify, recruit, and interview qualified CHW candidates
Training
Variety of training opportunities including core skills and disease-specific trainings
Consulting
Support for integration of CHWs into organizations and their systems, including guidance on implementation, supervisor support, and intervention fidelity
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Evaluation
Program level (e.g., research design, formative and summative evaluation, logic models, and process mapping) and system level (e.g., identifying strengths and areas for improvement)
Direct Service
Management of CHWs for organizations that prefer to leverage SUHI’s expertise to oversee CHWs and their program’s respective policies and processes
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“Our collaboration with SUHI in developing and implementing our CHW program has been a powerful partnership. The depth of experience SUHI brought enabled us to identify perfect candidates, deploy their skills to achieve measurable impact, and develop our own internal expertise to expand the program.”
-Dr. Carrie Nelson, Senior Medical Director, Advocate Physician Partners
“SUHI’s Asthma CarePartners program was truly life-changing for our members and their families. The collaboration between our care coordinators and the SUHI community health workers has helped our members better understand their disease... these efforts have helped improve their quality of life, allowing them to become active participants in their health care.”
-Dr. Connie Zak, Vice President of Healthcare Management, Community Care Alliance of Illinois and Family Health Network
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Who contracts CROWD?
Recent Clients:
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Advocate Physician Partners Enlace Chicago
Family Health Network
Get Covered Illinois
Medical Home Network
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Mercy Accountable Care Organization (Iowa)
Sinai Health System
University of Chicago Medical Center University of Illinois at Chicago
Wayne County (Michigan) Health Department
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CROWD is supported in part by The Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute.
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