Helping People Handle Their Health Care:
An Interview with HEALCorps' Ian Valerio

Aired June 10, 1999

David C. Barnett–There's a new plan afoot to deal with this sort of issue that Faye just told us about, Faye's issues that she deals with every day. Ian Valerio is the coordinator of a new project called HEALCorps. It's a part of the AmeriCorps volunteer program, and he joins us on the phone to explain a little bit about it for us. Good morning, Ian Valerio.

Ian Valerio–Good morning.

DCB–What is HEALCorps, first of all, let's start with definitions.

IV–Sure, well, HEALCorps is basically an acronym for the Health Education Advocacy and Leadership Corps, and it's an AmeriCorps-based program that's mission is to empower Cleveland's suburban residents to become more proactive partners in the management of their own health care, and the idea is to do this through increasing the capacity of community-based institutions and organizations within the greater Cleveland area.

DCB–Well, those are fancy words and they sound impressive, but how do we do that on a practical level?

IV–Well, basically, the program's objectives and its goals will basically be to provide support for child immunization programs within the city, breast and cervical screening projects for females and women, teenage pregnancy prevention programs, as well lead poisoning, HIV/AIDS and asthma outreach and education efforts, so we're focusing on a number of public health problems in the Cleveland area, and focusing on those in order to allow for our partners in a community to provide care, as well as to give residents information into where to seek care.

DCB–So how have you gone about this, how have you developed these partners?

IV–Well, the way it started, there was a three-fold process, we started with individual consultations with various public health organizations, and then from there we went into a strategic planning process, which has been ongoing for about a year now. By doing those first two things, we were able to establish a number of partners in the area, which some of them include such areas as Cleveland Department of Health, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, the Health Museum of Cleveland, Environmental Health Watch, Metro Health Medical Center, and St. Luke's Foundation of Ohio. All those programs came together, we consolidated, we collaborated over a number of months, came together and formed the strategic planning process, which is ongoing at this time, and then in addition to that, what we also did is we took and reviewed various volunteer placements within the Cleveland area, specifically with relation to Case Western Reserve students, sole areas that were related to public health and health needs that weren't being met and the students would really express interest to where they'd like to go. Team that up with the various partners and discuss and put together this proposal for the HEALCorps program.

DCB–So what happens, do these students-you've figured out the areas of need, and now these students go out into the community and address these issues by helping with immunization, etc., etc.?

IV–What they'll be doing is helping the partners build on capacity so they'll get qualified people in the field, actually, hopefully ideally drawing volunteers and to come to areas of need where we could help some of the residents that express the different areas that I mentioned previously.

DCB–I've got about a minute left here, is this in process now, or you're about to launch it, or what?

IV–We're looking for operational in the fall, so we're looking around September to October of '99, and right now we're finishing basically the strategic process, the ongoing process that's going on.

DCB–Well, maybe what we'd like to do is check back with you to see how it's going.

IV–Sure, that'd be great.

DCB–Ian Valerio is project coordinator for HEALCorps, which is part of the AmeriCorps program, in association with Case Western Reserve University. Thanks for joining us.

IV–Thank you.