NNLM Region 5 - Outreach & Engagement Award - Y2

This project seeks to serve rural people in northern California by improving their access to medical information. We will train community health navigators (from two programs in the service region: Home Visitors and Help Me Grow) in rural remote areas on the use of MedlinePlus and other high quality, vetted, reliable health information resources. Two separate trainings will take place throughout the project year, one in English and one in Spanish, to best serve our northern California demographic. Training will take place in three parts, including individual pre-work, in-person group training, and follow up virtual check-ins, coaching, and evaluation. In alignment with adult learning theory, this three-part program will create deeper learning for community health navigators to recognize the benefits of virtual health information tools and to understand how to fold the tools into their daily work with vulnerable rural families. Additionally, this training will provide multiple touch points to build relationships with like-minded professionals and create a network of care. Finally, the project will include an evaluative/research component. We will administer a survey before training takes place, shortly after training takes place, and 4 months after training takes place. We will also conduct follow-up focus groups (during Q&A/coaching sessions) with the community health navigators who take part in the training. Doing so will allow us to assess the impact of our project, identify best practices for improving rural access to medical information, and determine next steps for future projects in this region. In order to build capacity and promote scale, a few key stakeholders representing future training cohorts will be invited through the Home Visitors and Help Me Grow navigators programs to participate in the process. These stakeholders may include a school nurse, school mental health personnel, or family support workers.