Right Care University of Best Practices 5 10 21

We will be addressed Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) as well as the utilization of community activation campaigns and Community Health Workers to improve care for underserved communities.
We first heard from Dr. Vito Campese discussed Chronic Kidney Disease including environmental aspects. His talk covered the basic risk factors of Chronic Kidney Disease including obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. His talk included biological pathways related to industrial and agricultural chemicals that become absorbed into the kidney and increase the incidence and severity of CKD.
Our Los Angeles Co-Chair, the Chief Medical Officer of Watts Healthcare, Dr. Oliver Brooks, provided an update on the "Release the Pressure" Hypertension program that seeks to engage up to 300,000 African American women to serve as Community Health Workers to help themselves, family and friends reduce and better manage Hypertension. This effort to drive down heart attacks and strokes through better hypertension management is a collaborative effort among a coalition of health care organizations: the American Medical Association (AMA), AMA Foundation, Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC), American Heart Association (AHA), Minority Health Institute (MHI) and National Medical Association (NMA).
Two prominent experts in the field of Community Health Workers/Promotores (CHW/Ps), Brendaly Rodriguez and Margarita Holguin, shared best practices for integrating these resources into the care team. We learned practical and impactful approaches that have been successfully used to better manage multiple chronic diseases, including hypertension and diabetes. Ms. Rodriguez described the role of CHW/Ps in service delivery, healthcare research and clinical interventions. She also provided an update on the progress of health disparities research and on interventions incorporating CHW/Ps to address social determinants of health. Ms. Holguin described the role of CHW/Ps as true members of the health care team and highlighted effective models.