WALNUT CREEK, Calif. /eNewsChannels/ — NEWS: Latino Consultants, LLC, a leading social-cause marketing firm for 18 years, today launched the first bilingual mobile health resource ‘web-app’ as part of a hyper-local capacity building initiative in Contra Costa County, Calif. The tools are evidence-based and leverage the mobile health behaviors of low-income communities to engage in accessing enrollment and local health resources.
The web-based app, www.CCCHealthCare.org and its Spanish-language counterpart – www.CCCSalud.org – are part of an overall Capacity-Building initiative designed by Latino Consultants on behalf of a philanthropic client. The bilingual mobile health resource “web-app” gives hyper-local health access information in the user’s hand – and in their language – to work perfectly with health reform – and beyond that for an even larger scope: eligibility is identified without a registration requirement and direct connections to enrollment and local resources are at the users’ fingertips.
“For silo-trained outreach workers, this capacity building initiative empowers a whole health approach and builds trust with the communities they serve,” said Sara Elena Loaiza, Founder and Managing Partner of Latino Consultants. “The goal is to increase access to services and reduce barriers to care for low-income Contra Costa residents by linking resources.”
The tools – which include the mobile technology, a print resource, and training components – are evidence-based and leverages the mobile health behaviors of low-income communities to engage in accessing enrollment and local health resources. The initiative development was via community-partnerships, where 25 local, county, faith-based, academic, and private charitable organizations took part in shaping content.
This integrated capacity-building initiative launched as a public service on behalf of the John Muir/Mt. Diablo Community Health Fund to empower community health educators, social workers, navigators and outreach workers.
“It is a myth that low-income and underserved populations suffer from a digital divide – WiFi and affordable smart devices changed all that,” adds Ms. Loaiza. “But there remains a huge information divide for non-English speakers. The underserved populations are the ones most likely to access health information via mobile and the census shows 75 percent of Latinos speak a language other than English at home. This initiative presents a true solution.”
Latino Consultants has been at the forefront of developing and linguistically and culturally-competent tools to aid education and enrollment, including the unveiling of the first bilingual health resource app (the iCoverageGuide(TM)) at the Centers for Disease Control’s National Conference on Health Communications (2012) and being the first to use QR codes in health education materials so that access, enrollment and resources jump from the page to the mobile device (2011).
More information: http://www.CCCHealthCare.org/ (English) and http://www.CCCSalud.org/ (Spanish).
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