Bios
Community Health Workers Q & A: Emerging Trends
Kevin Barnett, DrPH, MCP is a Senior Investigator at the Public Health Institute. He has led research and fieldwork in hospital community benefit and health workforce diversity at PHI for over two decades. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator of Alignment for Health Equity and Development (AHEAD), a national initiative funded by the Kresge Foundation to align and focus investments by hospitals, public health, and financial institutions in communities with health disparities. He also serves as the co-leader of the Health Care Transformation Hub in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100 Million Healthier Lives initiative.
Kevin served on the IOM committee that produced the 2004 report “In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce,” and has led numerous national and state studies in the workforce diversity arena that focus in areas such as health professions accreditations, building primary care capacity, the contributions of community health workers, the roles of academic health centers, and developing regional health career pathway systems. He currently serves as the Co-Director of the California Health Workforce Alliance, as a member of the Board of Directors of Communities Joined in Action, and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Trinity Health System.
Grace Damio is a public health nutritionist and Director of Research and Training at the Hispanic Health Council. Ms. Damio joined HHC in 1986 and currently oversees HHC’s community-based research and cultural competence training. She has developed and overseen many of HHC’s initiatives designed to reduce health disparities in the areas of health care access, chronic disease management, obesity prevention, food security, nutrition education, maternal and child health and cross cultural training. Ms. Damio has been HHC’s lead on the development and evaluation of community health worker service models for health promotion and chronic disease management. HHC’s Breastfeeding: Heritage and Pride Peer Counseling Program is recognized by the CDC and IOM as an evidence-based best practice. DIALBEST, a randomized controlled trial conducted with the University of Connecticut/Yale University and Hartford Hospital, tested the use of peer counseling to improve diabetes management and glycemic control among low-income Latinos, with very positive, published results, particularly in Hba1c reduction.
Ms. Damio currently leads the peer coaching component of a CMS-funded/DSS-led smoking cessation incentive study. She has worked with a number of academic and clinical partners, including her role as deputy director of the (NIH) Center for Eliminating Health Disparities Among Latinos (CEHDL) from 2005-2011. CEHDL’s community-based participatory research on solutions to food insecurity led to the now operational Hartford Mobile Market, which HHC is evaluating Ms. Damio has authored and co-authored many articles published in peer-reviewed journals. She serves on several local, statewide and national boards and committees related to addressing health inequities through research and policy change. Ms. Damio holds a bachelor’s degree in community nutrition from the University of Connecticut and master’s degree in public health nutrition from Columbia University.
Carl H. Rush, MRP has worked full time for and with community health workers (CHWs) for the past 19 years. He serves as a core team member of a policy center on CHWs at the University of Texas – Houston School of Public Health, and has supported studies on CHW employment policy for the states of Arizona, Texas and Indiana, and for Public Health Seattle/King County. He recently finished revising a national e-learning series for the CDC on policy and systems change to promote employment of CHWs. Carl was a lead author on the CHW National Workforce Study for the HRSA Bureau of Health Professions (2007), and ran the CHW Program at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio from 2001 to 2004.
Carl has also trained CHWs, supervisors and instructors in seven other states, and has provided technical assistance to grantees of the CDC, HRSA and CMS. He is a subject matter expert for the CMMI Grantee CHW Learning Collaborative and co-chair of the Sanofi US National CHW Advisory Board. He has consulted for Migrant Health Promotion, the CHW National Education Collaborative (U.S. Department of Education), and the National Council for Behavioral Health. He has advised CHW policy initiatives in more than 20 individual states, and groups of state officials for the Milbank Memorial Fund, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association. In 2000, he developed the initial curriculum for the Texas Public Health Leadership Institute. He is a national advisor to the Transition Clinics Network, the Commonwealth Fund demonstration of the Ambulatory Integration of Medical and Social (AIMS) model, and the CHW Knowledge Exchange Project at Johns Hopkins University.