Programs & Projects - University of Houston
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The Honors College

Programs & Projects

  • Trust and Learn

    Community Health Workers provide care coordination to their peers in various under-resourced communities. Trust and Learn is part of our responsive engagement and our push to produce positive health outcomes in communities.

  • Responsive Resourcing

    UH undergraduates and community health workers have teamed up to find resources and develop projects for communities participating in the Trust and Learn.

  • 2022 Summer CHW Project

    COVID-19 Vaccine Project Competition aims to educate communities on vaccines and increase vaccination rates by distributing resources and outreach. The competition will award 20 teams for the implementation of their projects. We are interested in short-term and high-impact projects that seek to build capacity in their communities.

  • Building Strong Brains

    Currently being developed in collaboration with UT at Tyler, Building Strong Brains Together/Construyendo Mentes Brillantes will be continuing education for Texas health professionals around early childhood development and advocating for strengthening community and families.

  • Diabetes Prevention Program

    A CDC-recognized program, the UHCHWI delivers type 2 diabetes prevention education with CHWs as facilitators. For more information, contact Cindy Paz at crpaz2@ central.uh.edu.

Past Projects

  • 2022 Projects

    • Bread of Life: Year 2 - CHWI organized a wide variety of outreach events, all coordinated with various partners, including the Harris County Public Health vaccination team. This partnership led to CHWs facilitating 2,068 vaccines throughout the cities of Houston and Pasadena, hosting 16 events, and having 159 individuals enrolled in care coordination. The Rockefeller-funded portions of the project ended in August 2022. Over the 1.5 years of CHWs working within their communities to build pathways toward health equity, they had conversations with individuals in their communities, culminating in 467 stories collected and 159 individuals enrolled in care coordination.
    • Trust and Learn - Continuation of developing the Responsive Trust Network and hosting The Story of Health Conference. The conference explored topics in which both community health workers, community health worker instructors, and certified health education specialists could learn new skills to serve their community better. We hosted around 100 individuals and distributed 109 certificates from five CEUs.
    • Building Strong Brains Together: Year 2 - Included an outreach model using standardized CHW process and outcome measures, the implementation and evaluation of Early Child Development Parent Education in the context of CHW-led care coordination, and the evaluation of program implementation and outcomes with PCIC in coordination with the UTHSCT team. Over 240 CEU certificates have been granted at this time.
    • City of Houston: Efficacy of CHW Research and Vaccine Education - In August 2022, UHCHWI received a grant from the City of Houston from CDC’s National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities. The innovation of the model rests in the conceptual insistence on strengths-based response to individual health needs, coordinated data tracking and analysis across organizations, and financial stability through distributed funding and tasks across embedded CHWs to leverage scope and scale. This group of CHWs was trained extensively in outreach strategies, health equity, and other health topics.
    • The Immunization Partnership: Vaccine Education Research - The Immunization Partnership (TIP) funded the creation of a series of vaccine advocacy training that touched on social determinants of health, misinformation, and rebuilding trust in vaccines.
    • Baylor College of Medicine - Atypical Diabetes Research - for the creation of 1.5 hours of atypical diabetes training that touched on social determinants of health and rebuilding trust in research.
    • Diabetes Prevention Program Cohort #5

  • 2021 Projects

    • Bread of Life: Year 1 - In June 2021, UHCHWI established what has become to be a long-term and collaborative relationship with Bread of Life. The work began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the health inequities that COVID-19 exacerbated. Funding from the Rockefeller Foundation was used to hire 17 community health workers at Bread of Life with the University of Houston Community Health Workers Initiative training CHWs, managing the implementation of outreach, and conducting analysis of the data collected by CHWs.
    • Trust and Learn - We received funding from Outreach Strategists for the development of the Responsive Trust Network. This network serves as the core of respect, trust, and support in underserved Houston communities. Our goal is to build a network that supports Community Health Workers and other community members in their journeys to become community health advocates or trusted health advocates. The network offers support and guidance to its members through connections. Members are able to communicate and support each other in order to assist their community better.
    • Building Strong Brains Together: Year 1 - The Building Strong Brains Together Project is an extension of the CHW Initiative of the Trust and Learn Program at the University of Houston and is a program that empowers Community Health Workers. This empowerment comes through the didactic theories and methods that teach them how to succor parents and families of toddlers in a home-based stressful environment. Year one focused on the development of Continuing Education Units CEUs), workshops, and courses for early childhood development as well as resources for parents.
    • Diabetes Prevention Program Cohort #4

  • 2020 Projects

  • 2019 Projects

    • Sight for Success
    • Mars Habitation
    • Diabetes Prevention Program Cohort #3
    • Pharis Fellows

  • 2018 Projects

  • 2017 Projects

    • Sight for Success
    • Pediatric Asthma in the Home Stretch 
    • Mars Habitation
    • Diabetes Prevention Program Cohort #1