Community Health Mentors

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American Heart Association Community Health Mentor Volunteer Description

Why use Community Health Workers/Mentors?

The American Heart Association’s Community Health Mentor program aims to educate community members who will be dedicated to changing the way people live their lives. We have found that reaching hard-to-reach communities requires training people who live, work and play in those communities to become community health mentors. The training focuses on learning by doing.

What is included in the training?

The Community Health Mentor Training is founded on core competencies, including Life’s Simple 7 prevention information and evaluative practice. Each community health mentor will attend a training composed of 8 interactive health and wellness modules focused on cardiovascular health and management. The curriculum focuses on learning about heart disease, stroke, risk factors and cultural competency training for working with diverse populations. The competencies include communication skills, motivational interviewing, behavior change and goal setting.

Responsibilities

All Community Health Mentors will be expected to complete the required training. After training, Mentors will be expected to provide blood pressure screening, health coaching, and motivational counseling to participants attending hypertension education classes. Mentors will also be expected to help with participant registration, data recording, room set-up and clean-up at the beginning and end of each class.

From July to June of following year every community health mentor will be responsible for:

• Attend at least 4 Check. Change. Control . hypertension management classes one Saturday per month.
• Help recruit community members to attend hypertension management classes and communicate with American Heart Association Coordinator as needed.
• Follow-up with hypertension management class participants to remind them about upcoming classes, encourage them to take blood pressure 2 times/month, and also to promote healthy living.
• Complete training on hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)

Time Commitment

• Attend a one day training (6 hours).
• Attend at least 4 hypertension management classes (from 9:30am-12:30pm one Saturday per month). Must be available for Nov 16th and Dec 14th, 2019
• Call participants 2 times a month to deliver brief health coaching and follow-up.
• Connect with AHA Community Health Worker/Mentor lead- 1 hour /month
• Total time commitment per month: between 5 to 6 hours.

Desired Qualifications

• Work experience or education in healthcare, health education, or public health
• Ability to speak, read, and write in English.
• Ability to work on Saturdays

Honorarium

You will receive $100 honorarium for every health education class you lead (one class per month), with an additional $50 for completing the Community Health Mentor training.