Outreach Leadership and General Activities
Health Outreach Coordinator: Wilson Masawi
Wilson began working with Project Bumwalukani as the Health Outreach Coordinator in February, 2007. Under his leadership, Project Bumwalukani’s outreach programs have grown to include eight community health groups, a voluntary HIV counseling and testing program, the Patient Education Program for educating waiting patients at the clinic, and as of last year, the Community Health Educators program. Wilson conducts all monthly Community Health Educator home evaluations. Additionally, he monitors community needs and the frequency of commonly observed conditions in order to assign topics for Community Health Educator refresher courses and bimonthly community outreaches.
Assistant Health Outreach Coordinator: Richard Kimanayi
Richard started working with FIMRC as a volunteer teaching life skills to secondary students. He joined the staff to support health education and later became a Community Health Educator. Since February 2010, he began assisting Wilson Masawi with managing the Community Health Educators program. Richard teaches all Community Health Educator refresher courses (weekly training review sessions) and tracks the knowledge and progress of each educator. Additionally, he plans and attends all community outreaches and leads the monthly meeting for health educators.
Voluntary HIV Counseling and Testing Coordinator: Joshua Mukhama
Joshua joined Project Bumwalukani as a HIV counselor and tester in early 2009 and began managing ongoing support and counseling services in October of that year. After identifying HIV-positive individuals, Joshua assigns each patient to a Community Health Educator for ongoing monitoring and counseling. Additionally, Joshua spends one day a week conducting supervision visits, during which he visits clients who have been visited by their assigned Community Health Educator. With the help of this outreach team, all Community Health Educators are carefully monitored to ensure that correct health information is being learned, retained, and disseminated to the community. Outreach activities include:
- Ongoing education: Community Health Educators attend weekly health education refresher courses on the health topics taught during the initial training. Topics are identified by the outreach coordinator based on observations by the outreach team or requests from the Community Health Educators themselves. Health knowledge is monitored through pre- and post- tests administered before and after each course.
- Home-based evaluation: Each Community Health Educator is visited at home on a monthly basis by the Health Outreach Coordinator to review the individual’s performance and address programmatic and individual challenges. Additionally, three of the patients seen by the Community Health Educator in the past month are visited to identify individual and programmatic strengths and weaknesses for home-based education and care.
- HIV patient surveillance: The Voluntary HIV Counseling and Testing Coordinator visits the patients of each Community Health Educator on a rotating schedule to ensure that all individuals are receiving proper education and psychosocial support.
- Health group home meetings: Each of FIMRC’s community health groups meets twice a month at a different group member’s house. During these meetings an evaluation of the home is completed to ensure that members are carrying health information to their homes and implementing positive changes.
*Data for all outreach activities will be presented in a monthly newsletter that will be distributed to all sponsors of the Community Health Educators program.
