Exchange Bank Grant puts Ipads to Work for Local Promoteres

We are thrilled to acknowledge a grant from Exchange Bank Foundation for technology hardware that will support the crucial work of local promotores de salud (also known as community health workers) in their capacity as community health liaisons in northern Sonoma County.

The grant of $5,000 equips local clinic-based promotores with iPads that will allow better, more efficient and coordinated outreach in predominantly low-income and Latinx neighborhoods. The iPads will be used for social determinants of health (SDH) needs assessments and linkages to critical resources such as food, housing, transportation, childcare, elder care, legal aid, financial aid, PPE, vaccine testing sites, vaccination sites, and more.

Promotores are bilingual and bicultural public health workers who act as trusted health messengers and navigators for their communities. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, promotores have proved vital to outreach efforts in our region’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities. This outreach includes education and support with access to care, resources, and vaccinations. The close relationships promotores have with their communities makes possible this targeted outreach.

Founded in 1890 in Santa Rosa by father and son Manville and Frank Doyle, Exchange Bank has a long track record of community support in Sonoma County. Perhaps most famously, the trust established by Frank Doyle before he died has been awarding scholarships to students of Santa Rosa Junior College since 1948, helping more than 139,000 students to date with the Doyle Scholarship.

Despite the huge effort being mounted by promotores, they remain as a group generally underfunded and under-resourced, often operating in volunteer or temporary stipend-based positions through grassroots organizations that are themselves operating on shoestring budgets.

Thanks to the grant from Exchange Bank, the new iPads offer this effort a significant technological upgrade that will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the outreach, resulting in more people contacted, informed, supported with access to vaccinations, and connected to other Covid-19 and health-related resources and services.

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