Elsa Cornejo has carried out research-action projects on gender and health, sexual and reproductive health, prevention of non-communicable disease (NCD), and community health promotion. She is currently project manager for the Center for Health Promotion in Nothern Mexico, a collaborative project between El Colegio de Sonora and the Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona funded by the UnitedHealth Group Chronic Disease Initiative.

Carlos Mendoza Montano, Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP)

Lungiswa Tsolekile, Lecturer, School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape. 

 

Lungiswa has a nutrition background.  Since joining the School of Public Health, she has worked in numerous research projects such as Chronic Poverty, a study investigating the response of households to shocks mainly HIV/AIDS pandemic, Primary Prevention of Non-communicable diseases in the townships and Prospective urban and Rural Epidemiological study (multi-country study).  Her main interests are in the primary prevention and control chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and obesity in adults and children.  She has worked with community health workers (CHWs) in a peri-urban area in designing a programme to increase community awareness of risk factors and prevention of NCDs with a focus on physical activity. She has also been involved in using Motivational Interviewing with CHWs to change the eating behaviours of community members belonging to the Health Club. She is a PhD candidate and is interested in developing and implementing an integrated training curriculum for community health workers working with NCDs in Khayelitsha.

Thandi Puoane, Professor at the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape.

 

Thandi's areas of specialisation are public health nutrition, chronic non-communicable diseases, child health and monitoring and evaluation of programmes. She completed undergraduate studies in nursing at the University of South Africa and postgraduate degrees (MPH and Dr PH) at the University of California at Berkeley, USA. Since 2000 she has been working with Community Health Workers (lay workers from the township) in designing and implementing a programme to increase community awareness about the risk factors and prevention of non-communicable diseases in a peri-urban area. She is also working with colleagues in research involving the use of traditional medicines for chronic conditions. She also has expertise, using motivation interviews for behaviour modification and in using participatory research methods.

Devraj Jindal, Research Officer at Centre of Excellence- Centre for Cardio-metabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia (COE-CARRS).

 

Dr. Jindal is a MPH (health promotion) candidate in the Global School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego. He received his bachelor's degree in dental surgery from M.M.C.D.S.R, Mullana, India in 2007. Dev joined PHFI in 2011 and has since been working with Community Health Workers (CHWs) on various projects. His work experience includes: focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with CHWs employed as Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) providers under Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP); selection, recruitment, training and supervision of  CHWs for projects under COE-CARRS. As part of his activities, he has experience of working with CHWs from different socio-economic backgrounds with varying levels of literacy in different settings in India. His main focus is to strengthen the Indian health care system by empowering the CHWs with basic clinical skills and the use of Electronic Decision Support System for prevention and control of Cardio-Metabolic Diseases (CMDs) related morbidity and mortality.

Basiro Davey, The Open University UK

 

Dr. Basiro Davey has over 30 years' experience of developing distance learning programmes in Health Sciences at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at The Open University UK, including contributing to training health care assistants and paramedics. Starting in 2009, she has worked with the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, UNICEF, WHO, AMREF and almost 60 Ethiopian health experts to design a comprehensive training curriculum for the country's 33,000 rural community health workers, covering the full range of maternal and child health, immunization, family planning and sexual health, nutrition, environmental hygiene, non-communicable diseases and mental health awareness. In this webinar, she reflects on the strengths and challenges of developing and implementing this programme and the potential for similar methods to contribute to community healthworker training in other parts of the world.