Field Research – Testing Educational Materials and Messages, Learning Outreach and Education Strategies
Altarum Institute for their client the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health)
“Soda Creek was a Godsend on this project! Her combination of content knowledge, technical design skills, and bilingual abilities is really unique and not something you will find. I worked with Sara over the course of several years and really appreciate how easy she is to work with as well as how quickly she is able to complete the work. Plus, her work was always high quality and well received by our client. I highly recommend Sara and Soda Creek and would welcome working with her again in the future!”
“Sara has it all. She can work with absolutely anyone, any personality. She is highly dependable and very honest about timelines and what she feels the can do well and provide high-quality results on. She has an incredible blend of direct-service experience and amazing community rapport, combined with the ability to analyze, get a bird’s eye view and come up with a carefully tailored approach or result. I have known Sara since 1995 or 1996, when our paths crossed in the farmworker/community/rural health world, but I hired her to work on my 4-year federally-funded National Institutes of Health health education project through Altarum Institute from 2009 through the present (project was extended to September 2014). She is unlike any other contractor we have because of her wonderful blend of community/professional. She always brings a value-added perspective that no one else is likely to have thought of. She does wonders with feedback or suggestions, and truly drives on until she and the client feel that the product really fits the need. I highly recommend Sara without hesitation.”
Sara Nelson, Principal Consultant) has worked with community health workers (CHWs) or promotoras since her early days in health outreach (17 years ago). CHWs promote community voice in health care. They are liaisons between patients and medical providers, they are motivators and advocates, they are teachers and trainers.
In 2002, Sara formed La Comunidad Habla (LCH) which she designed to be a spin on the traditional CHW role. For LCH, she recruited and trained Spanish-speaking women to train their fellow neighbors in finding and accessing online health resources. LCH has grown over the years and the group of CHWs she trained now have their own small-businesses as computer literacy trainers and health communication technical assistants.
Sara has also regularly collaborated with the New Mexico Community Health Worker Association. In June 2012 she gave a presentation on facilitation techniques at their annual training. We also worked together last year to update the Salud Manual, an online and print community resource directory.
The Community Health Worker Health Disparities Initiative was launched to reduce health disparities in heart disease and asthma in underserved and minority communities across the United States. As trusted members of their communities, community health workers play a critical role in reducing health disparities by teaching community members about healthy lifestyle choices and providing preventive care guidance. The manuals are used to prepare community health workers to train others (train-the-trainer) and they’re also used to teach Latino families about heart health and asthma. Soda Creek works with a great team of people who are committed to producing the highest quality health curricula. We’ve worked with them since 2009 providing technical assistance for these manuals and other health-related tools and curricula. We love this work
Facilitate focus groups in Spanish – Review and modify discussion guide, facilitate focus groups in Spanish, review and modify discussion notes. We have currently done 3 sets of focus groups in order to evaluate the class over time.
We happily partnered again with Leah Steimel of Fourfold Partners to provide focus group facilitation for our client, Encuentro. The purpose of the focus group was to assess the home health aide training program provided by Encuentro and CNM. We consulted by reviewing the discussion guide, facilitating 2 focus groups in Spanish, and reviewing and modifying focus group notes.
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