Our Mission:

Health Matters’ mission is to monitor, promote and provide an answer for the need of good health for all Americans, most importantly Central Florida’s growing Hispanic and minority communities. This mission is achieved by offering health care and prevention for the mind, body and soul. The basic premise of a healthy community movement is that well-informed people, working together in an effective process, can make a profound difference in the health and quality of people’s lives within their community.

What is the Latino Leadership’s Health Promoters Program?

Objectives

1) Develop and implement the innovative Health Matters for underserved, ‘high risk’ Latinos that focuses on good health promotion as well as available resources for the screening and treatment of health related issues.

2) Develop and disseminate innovative health educational materials that demonstrate cultural sensitivity through images, language, or other means for underserved and at ‘high risk’ Latinos.

3) Provide training for health care professionals or others serving ‘high risk’ or underserved Latinos on how to incorporate culturally sensitive health education into outreach, education, prevention, and treatment services.

4) Disseminate health education materials to ‘high risk’ and underserved Latinos.

Program Design

The ultimate goal of the Health Matters is to improve the health outcomes of Latinos in Central Florida. This is achieved through using lay community members as health promoters. The Health Matters Health Promoter training is a six-week comprehensive training. The training is divided into sessions that cover various topics associated with health risks and emphasizes prevention. Each seminar is a three hour commitment with lectures, independent and group study, and group discussions. Topics include, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, healthy eating habits, physical activity, breast cancer, nutrition, among others.

Participants will have direct participation in all activities and be considered for graduation only when the candidate designs a portfolio on lessons learned and curriculum design for future program use.

Latino Leadership’s Health Promoters are part of an overall health initiative to supply the community with important and useful information on diverse health issues and best practices to help create healthier lifestyles. This peer-to-peer model is based on studies of successful approaches for outreach. Research has proved that direct intervention by educated and trained lay people is one of the best strategies for behavioral change and learning.