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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Sergio Matos, CHW, Community Health Worker Network of NYC, 425 East 25th Street, Box 616, New York City, NY 10010, 718-703-9340, smatos@momsandkids.org and Deborah Williams, CHW, PRYDE-Parenting Resiliency in Youth Development and Empowerment, Black Rock Regional Multipurpose Complex, Black Rock, Trinidad and Tobago.

Community Health Workers in Tobago have built a community-driven response to human rights violations in the region. PRYDE started out as a project targeting kids who were not attending school. The project utilized CHWs to locate children absent from school and work with their families to get the children back to school. CHWs found that most parents were young single moms who faced numerous challenges and school was not a priority. Discussions with these young parents showed that their top four concerns were rape, incest, violence against women and poverty. In a direct response to the needs of these communities, PRYDE changed its focus to address these human rights violations and engage the young women in developing their esteem, skills, social capital and parenting abilities. The CHWs in Tobago have taken a strentgh-based approach to working with families that has helped these young woman to organize their communities against the culture of violence and human rights violations against women. Ms. Deborah Williams, a CHW who runs PRYDE will present this work.

Learning Objectives:

• At the conclussion of the session, participants will be more aware of human rights violations existing in Tobago communities relative to violence, rape, incest against women. Particpants will discuss human rights violations as a public health issue. Participants will discover how community health workers are working to organize their communities to battle these injustices and change norms and policies that permit such abuses against women. Participants will learn the skills that CHWs in Tobago have found essential to their efforts and the programs they have created.

Keywords: Violence Prevention, Community Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation