Celebrating Five Years of Bringing Health Resources to the Latine Community

Five years ago, our Health Equity team realized that Latine community members living in Washington County needed better access to health resources. This is how our Promotores de Salud initiative at Adelante Mujeres began. As our staff and volunteers came together last month to celebrate this anniversary, we’ve been reflecting on how the initiative has grown in the past five years and the impact it’s had.

About Promotores de Salud at Adelante Mujeres

The Adelante Mujeres Health Equity team provides training to women interested in becoming volunteer Promotores de Salud, which, in English, translates to ‘Community Health Workers’. These volunteer Promotores — as well as two full-time Promotores de Salud on the Adelante staff — are on the ground in communities, bringing health-related resources to Latine community members. “They are our frontline,” says Carla Fisanich, the Health Equity Program Manager at Adelante Mujeres. “They are the ones who were out there during the Covid panemic, during times when no one else wanted to go out. The Promoteres de Salud were out in the community, identifying the needs of families and working to provide resources for them."

The Promotores de Salud are trained to answer all types of questions for community members. They volunteer their time handing out brochures, tabling events, and running vaccine clinics. They also recently started doing case management, where they field calls from the community and meet one-on-one with people to help them with things like setting up SNAP.

How the Initiative has Grown in Five Years

When our Health Equity team began building a Community Health Worker program at Adelante Mujeres, they had no idea a global pandemic was on the horizon. They moved fast to build the structure of the initiative when Covid hit Oregon, as they knew it would be vital to get health resources to the Latine community as quickly as possible. Here’s a look at how the initiative quickly came to life.

2017
Adelante Mujeres received funding to train women to become Promotores de Inmigración — volunteers focused specifically on providing the Latine community with immigration-related information and resources. The team recognized the need for health-related Promotores, and so began recruiting women interested in becoming Promotores de Salud.

2018
Promotores de Salud, along with Adelante Mujeres staff, began coordinating flu vaccine clinics for low-income Latine community members. Our team continued training more Promotores de Salud.

2019

Staff members within the Health Equity team at Adelante Mujeres received their Community Health Worker certifications.

2020
The pandemic began and Promotores de Salud put on their facemasks and took to the streets to help families access food, health resources, and financial support for those most affected by unemployment. Staff members and Promotores de Salud supported mass Covid vaccination efforts and support groups were created.

2021
Governor Kate Brown visited the Adelante Mujeres building to recognize local Community Health Workers and their vaccine efforts during the pandemic. Adelante Mujeres received a grant from Washington County to create a learning collaborative with more than ten county organizations. A coordinator was hired to manage the Promotores de Salud initiative, and two more staff members got their Community Health Worker certification. Promotores de Salud continued to support with vaccination clinics.

2022
The learning collaborative was formed with eleven other organizations under the leadership of Adelante Mujeres and Familias en Acción. People from the 2020 support group received their Community Health Worker certification. Promotores de Salud continue to support families with food boxes, bus tickets, and more and began doing one-on-one case management to support Latine community members.

The Five Year Celebration

Last month, our Health Equity team put together a celebration to thank our amazing volunteer Promotores de Salud. "I think it is rather difficult to maintain Promotores,” says Lucia Benavides, a staff Promotore de Salud who began at Adelante Mujeres as a volunteer Promotora. “It is a difficult job that consumes you emotionally and there is what is called ‘burnout’.”

These women, who selflessly give their time in order to lift up fellow community members, are contributing to a more equitable future for Latine families in Washington County. We applaud them for their courageous leadership in the community and cannot thank them enough for their work in the community.