By Kay Miller Temple, The Rural Monitor, March 17, 2021
In 2014, a statewide effort to disseminate primary healthcare delivery innovations led to the creation of the Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Extension System (OPHES). This system, modeled after agriculture extension offices, furthered its work by using County Health Improvement Organizations (CHIOs). Allison Seigars, a member of one of those CHIOs, remembers attending an early meeting with another colleague and first hearing about Community Health Workers (CHWs), their skill sets, and the value they could bring to community healthcare outreach.
“We thought, wow! Would these professionals be the answer to working with our Marshallese population?” she said, sharing that multiple efforts to engage this local community from the Marshall Islands had met with little success.
Seigars is now the executive director of Rural Health Projects, Inc./Northwest Area Health Education Center (RHP/NwAHEC) located in Enid, Oklahoma. With her organization acting as the fiscal agent, a 2017-2020 Rural Health Network Development (RHND) Grant Program award allowed the Tri-County Health Improvement Organization (Tri-CHIO) to provide intentional outreach to the area’s Hispanic and Marshallese communities. The RHND Program is administered by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) within the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
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