Multnomah County health officials train nearly 200 community health workers on coronavirus
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MULTNOMAH COUNTY, OR (KPTV) — Multnomah County health officials are rapidly training nearly 200 people in the community on the coronavirus.
It’s the first time they’ve trained at this level and pace on an emerging outbreak.
‘Coronavirus 101’ workshops are being offered for free, and they’re so popular that there’s a waitlist 60 people long.
The classes, however, are only open to community health workers. These are people who are trusted leaders, work closely with county health care, and possibly share ethnicity, language, or life experiences with the community they serve.
Sara McCall is a nurse epidemiologist with the Multnomah County Health Department and investigates outbreaks and public health emergencies.
She says they know communities have a lot of questions and they know there’s a lot of fear and anxiety around the coronavirus, so they want to make sure community health workers get the information they need to bring back to their neighbors.
“A lot of it is just myth-busting,” McCall said. “They hear these things on social media. What we’re really concerned about is discrimination and xenophobia.”
McCall also says one of the biggest messages they want to share is to be prepared, but don’t panic.
That includes communicating with work about staying home to keep healthy, planning for childcare, and planning to have things at home in case you can’t leave, like food and medications.
Community health workers at the meeting say it’s so important to have factual information they can feel confident educating their communities with.
“It’s our job to learn what’s going on, and this is really impactful right now to all our communities,” Adriana Cardenas, a community health worker, said. “We want to get as much as we can so we can bring it back to the clinic and bring it back to the patients.”
There is only one more workshop scheduled, but the county health department says there has been so much demand that they may schedule additional training sessions in the future.
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