‘Health’ Archives
Circle of Healing CHAT
The Circle of Healing Practitioners CHAT is a collaborative of Backyard practitioners which includes complementary healers, elders, representatives from different cultural traditions, conventional health professionals and community care givers. Members of this CHAT come together as practitioners interested in creating a more formalized network of people operating in a Community Care-Giving system around Backyard residents. This will be done by providing a better information and support for healing and reflection about the message of dis-ease. This network serves both the Backyard community receiving care and the healing practitioner community in the Backyard. The vision behind the Circle of Healing Practitioners CHAT is grounded in cultural health practices and ways of knowing that honor the reciprocal and holistic nature of healing. In order to meet the health needs of the people living in the Backyard, this CHAT aims to empower health practitioners and community members and [...]
Highlights of 2011: Strategies & Activities
Community Engagement & Leadership Community Engagement in the BYI is lead and facilitated by the Cultural Wellness Center. The community infrastructure for the initiative consists of three “pillars”: Citizen Health Action Teams (CHATs) Community Com-mission on Health Community Resource Body. CHATs are formed by residents to design, implement and evaluate prevention and wellness projects. Each project targeted barriers to health, weaknesses in achieving health, and followed the recommendations outlined in the 2009 community health needs Assessment. In 2011, the CHATs held 173 activities in which 1285 residents participated. The following key themes were identified and implemented across the CHATs: Strategies to increase social support within their identified communities; Strategies to increase social cohesion within the Backyard community; Strategies based on their knowledge of problems and solutions and based on their skill set; Inventory [...]
A-Pod CHAT: Advancing Opportunities through a Partnership of Diabetics
When A Partnership Of Diabetics (A-POD) was first designed and implemented, our goal was simply to create a community-based program for advancing the skills of persons with diabetes to become better self-managers of their condition. We started with POD-Tensives, a daylong workshop to introduce our strategies to participants and then sponsored weekly Meet-ups where participants could share the “mile-markers” on their journey toward better health and wellness. Meet-ups became and still are the key ingredient in A-POD”'s program because it”'s the time that participants can actually share their progress or problems with others with similar challenges. Meet-ups are more than a “support group” because we also track participant”'s numbers to demonstrate that with the additional focus on diabetes and learning new and better tools to manage our conditions, we improve! In a third party evaluation conducted by a graduate student from the University of [...]
