Description
The Health Education Project is a health-education initiative that provides information, encourages self-care, and helps people make healthy choices.
In 1988, El Rio Health Center received a grant from the United States Public Health Service to provide healthcare to Tucson's homeless. Nurse practitioners visited shelters and soup lines. Soon, however, they saw they could do more to intervene in the cycle of poverty, violence, and homelessness. Today, The Health Educaiton Project provides classes in over 25 residential sites: Homeless Shelters, Transitional Shelters, Correctional Facilities, Domestic Violence Shelters, and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Centers.
We've developed over forty sessions, designed to strengthen health behaviors and life skills. For example: Communicable Diseases, Heart Health, Nutrition, Building Self-Esteem, Budget, Sexually-Transmitted Diseases, Substance Abuse, Grief and Loss, Stress Management, Weight Management...
Who teaches? Nurses, physicians, teachers, business people, homemakes and secretaries. We support our teachers with class outlines, comprehensive and scientific presentations, interactive exercises, posters and videos, worksheets, and handouts.
Who attends: Both men and women attend our health and life skills classes, held during the day or evening. Primarily we serve adults; we also provide classes for children and teens who accompany their parents, and "teens only" classes.
