Cracking the Code on Rural Community Health: The Power of Community Health Workers with Dr. Laura Guyer

The Independent Life

Welcome to this episode of our podcast, where we continue to pull the thread on community with Dr. Laura Guyer. As we emerge from the isolation brought by the COVID pandemic, we believe that reconnecting, re-engaging, and reuniting our community and the community of people with disabilities is more important than ever. Tony and Dr. Guyer met at the University of Florida and have worked together on collaborative efforts for a few years now, working to build community academic partnerships. In this episode, they discuss the concept of community health workers and how this model can be used to meet the needs of our community, especially those living in rural areas. Community health workers are people who represent the target communities, such as communities for people with disabilities. For example, if we want to meet the education needs of people with disabilities, we may consider targeting a student in high school or their parents to be a community health worker. Another example is our newest program, the AgrAbility project, which aims to aid farmers, ranchers, other agricultural workers, and farm family members living with a disability. We may target a farmer who has a disability and who is interested in helping support other farmers who have disabilities. Dr. Guyer and Tony discuss the utility of community health workers in meeting the needs of rural communities. The Center for Independent Living of North Central Florida serves 16 out of the 67 counties in Florida, and they are predominantly rural communities. They also delve into how the counties in our rural area rank in county health rankings and the work that needs to be done in promoting the health of these counties. They also discuss how we can potentially propose cracking the code on addressing the needs of people in rural communities, by the use of community health workers. Join us in this conversation to learn more about the importance of community health workers and their potential to serve our communities in need.