Portland Health Equity Stakeholder Alignment (PHESA) Winter Quarterly Meeting

We are pleased to announce that the Portland Health Equity Stakeholder Alignment's Winter Quarterly Meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 7th from 10:00am to 12:30pm at Merrill Auditorium Rehearsal Hall (20 Myrtle St.) in Portland.
We are looking forward to building off of the incredible energy & ideas that were brought forth at our October meeting. We are also excited to meet those of you who are new to this initiative! We will be sharing more details in the coming weeks, including an agenda & information about parking. This will once again be an in-person only event. You should have received a Google Calendar invitation for February 7. Please RSVP via the calendar invite or email as soon as you are able.

All committees should plan to meet during the next 4 weeks prior to Feb. 7th, so please be on the lookout for communication from your committee chair(s)!

We recently announced that we are in the process of establishing a Community Health Worker (CHW) Committee! We are actively seeking interested CHWs to join the committee & help us get it off the ground! If you or your organization works with CHWs who serve the Greater Portland area (Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, Windham, & Gorham) please encourage those who are interested to fill out our interest form & we will get connected with them! Interested CHWs should note that we are planning to host a meeting with all new members during either the second-to-last or last week of January, prior to the quarterly meeting.

As a reminder, here are the draft goals of the CHW Committee:

1. Provide CHWs in the Greater Portland area with opportunities to network, collaborate, share resources, express frustrations and ways to heal, and receive and offer peer support with other local CHWs.
2. Work closely with PPH Leadership, Committee Chairs, and the MEG Committee.
3. Assign a liaison to communicate with all other committees.
4. Collaborate with all other Alignment committees to inform members about their community's current health and social needs, as well as emerging issues in Greater Portland, and to explore opportunities to address those issues through strengthening relationships and designing culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions.
5. Ensure that all Alignment projects align with overarching goals & are designed to meet community needs & emerging issues, as well as advise and support all other committees’ work as needed.
6. Train CHWs and provide needed tools to successfully advocate for the communities they serve, especially at the policy level, and pass these skills & knowledge on to community members to use in their own advocacy efforts and have a presence at planning tables.
7. Collaborate with organizations (e.g. MCD Global Health) to provide CHWs with the training & tools necessary to actively participate in decision-making discussions and initiatives that support and strengthen the CHW workforce at the local and state level (e.g. MaineCare CHOWs consultants for the PC Plus Program, Maine Community Health Worker Initiative.)
8. Educate health & behavioral health care facilities’ providers about CHW services and encourage these facilities to hire CHWs or contract with agencies and public health departments that provide CHW services in order to integrate CHWs into their care teams.
9. Work to expand awareness of and access to CHW services for all vulnerable populations in Greater Portland including racial & ethnic minorities, New Mainers, older adults, LGBTQ+ communities, low-income community members, disabled community members, at-risk youth, the unhoused community, and more.

Thank you, as always, for your ongoing commitment to serving our communities! We look forward to seeing you in Portland soon!