In conjunction with the 41st Annual Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference, the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition and the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, Cincinnati Branch will host a free workshop on Thursday, April 5, 2:00 – 4:30 PM, at the Federal Reserve, 150 E. Fourth Street. (Photo identification required.)

This workshop, “Walking the Road to Health Together: Private, Nonprofit, and Community Partnerships,” will highlight strategies for addressing community development in the areas of health, energy, and food systems, including potential funding sources for promising new ideas, especially in Appalachian counties of Ohio, Kentucky and beyond.

Sessions will include:

How to Work with National Funding
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is an economic development agency of the federal government and 13 state governments, whose mission is to build community capacity and strengthen economic growth in Appalachia. ARC’s POWER program targets federal resources to help communities affected by job losses in coal mining, coal power plant operations, and coal-related supply chain industries. During this session, ARC will share information about the POWER program, and recent research findings on the region’s coal ecosystem and health disparities. Speaker: Kostas Skordas, Director, Division of Planning & Research, Appalachian Regional Commission.

The United States Department of Agriculture is helping communities scale up local and regional food systems and strengthen their economies. Opportunities for funding support are available for individual farmers looking to extend their growing season, a cooperative of growers looking to build a food hub, a farmers’ market that wants to accept SNAP benefits, a school that needs cold storage to store locally procured meat, and more. The USDA can assist with identifying an array of funding opportunities to support local food supply chains. Speaker: Victoria LeBeaux, USDA-NIFA.

How to Start Connecting with Health Projects: Exploring the Role of Community Health Workers
Often, healthy-communities work involves addressing complicated problems. And while the healthy-communities movement has evolved and many communities have seen much improvement, sometimes significant changes in health outcomes can take many years to materialize. Foundations can make significant and lasting impacts on communities by implementing new grant-making strategies, coordinating and nurturing deep partnerships across sectors, developing new measurement and evaluation strategies, and guiding sustainability of healthy-communities work for generations to come. The presenters will examine the role of Community Health Workers (CHWs). The session will examine the CHW role in a health care setting, and as an integral component helping health care providers meet their goals to improve satisfaction and quality of care, improve health outcomes and reduce cost. Panelists will discuss how CHWs are integrated into their practices, what services they provide, outcomes they have seen from their CHW efforts and strategies for sustaining the role within a health care organization. This session provides an overview of potential ways to collaborate and effectively leverage resources to sustain healthy-community efforts. Speakers: Megan Simpson, Program Officer, The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation; Dick Wittberg, Washington County Health Department; Stacey Heiss, Community Health Worker Washington County Health Department.