April 26th, 2018; Philadelphia, PA: The Greater Philadelphia Healthcare Partnership welcomed representatives from our partners at Philadelphia FIGHT to headline April’s IP meeting. FIGHT’s highlighted program was Project TEACH, an innovative peer education service for people living with HIV/AIDS, developed in Philadelphia as a way to train peer leaders to become HIV experts and community educators. |
The meeting opened with IP Director Susan Thomas’s review of the Partnership’s year-to-date accomplishments. Three-quarters of the way through GPHP’s thirteenth year, we have completed nearly 400 trainings – on-site customized trainings for union-affiliated and non-affiliated employers, blended online and in-person classes for union members looking to build their skills: registered apprenticeship programs, subsidized on-the-job training for new hires, soft skills, occupational skills and certifications, for frontline workers, managers and even patients. GPHP’s flexibility and responsive-ness is what makes us such a valuable resource for our many employer partners. Apprenticeship was a major focus of the quarterly partnership update, with multiple grant and other funding streams supporting approximately 60 apprentices in GPHP-affiliated programs!
Featured presenter Philadelphia FIGHT is one of the Training Fund’s founding Registered Apprenticeship partners, sponsoring Pennsylvania’s first Community Health Worker (CHW) Apprenticeship program; today’s presentation focused on a different but related FIGHT program, building on many of the same findings of the efficacy of peer relationships in medical treatment that helped inspire the CHW program. FIGHT’s Project TEACH is a homegrown, innovative 8-week health education program for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) developed in Philadelphia by PLWHA and ACT UP Philadelphia members as a way to train peer leaders to become HIV experts and community educators. TEACH is founded on the belief that people have a right to know about their own bodies and to determine their own healthcare. Graduates are encouraged to do community based education in their neighborhoods with the maxim, “Each one TEACH ten!” FIGHT designed a formal peer education program in 2001 that initially trained a small handful of TEACH grads to sit in clinic waiting rooms and talk to folks living with HIV, offer a supportive ear, and help folks see that you can live with HIV. Though it was not initially conceived as a work-force program, FIGHT’s first TEACH peers were able to leverage this work to find employment in the field later on. Since 2011, 57,712 people in Philadelphia have been trained by FIGHT Peers, including 11,942 educated by the Peer Education Team in 2016.
GPHP’s next meeting will be held at 8:30 AM on July 25th, at the District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund’s Breslin Learning Center (10th Floor of the Land Title Building, at 100 South Broad Street) Dr. Paul Harrington, Director of the Drexel University Center for Labor Markets & Policy (CLMP) will present findings from a GPHP-sponsored return-on-investment (ROI) study by Drexel CLMP. Dr. Harrington will be joined by Laurie Dugan, an e-Learning Account Executive at Collegis Professional.
The Greater Philadelphia Healthcare Partnership (GPHP) offers our partner organizations free to highly-discounted employer-driven health and human services training – on-site, off-site, or co-located, and “off the rack” or customized to meet our individual employer partners’ unique training needs. We offer skills training for incumbent workers, as well as subsidizing structured on-the-job training for new hires, and Registered Apprenticeship programs for incumbent workers or new hires.
If you are interested in learning more about GPHP or any of our projects, please contact
GPHP Director Susan B. Thomas at 215-568-2220, ext. 5102, or send an email to sthomas@1199ctraining.org.
You can also find us online at www.greaterphilahealthcare.org, or connect with us on Facebook (/GreaterPhilaHealthcare) and Twitter (@PhilaHCPartners). We hope that you will join us for July’s meeting.
Featured presenter Philadelphia FIGHT is one of the Training Fund’s founding Registered Apprenticeship partners, sponsoring Pennsylvania’s first Community Health Worker (CHW) Apprenticeship program; today’s presentation focused on a different but related FIGHT program, building on many of the same findings of the efficacy of peer relationships in medical treatment that helped inspire the CHW program. FIGHT’s Project TEACH is a homegrown, innovative 8-week health education program for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) developed in Philadelphia by PLWHA and ACT UP Philadelphia members as a way to train peer leaders to become HIV experts and community educators. TEACH is founded on the belief that people have a right to know about their own bodies and to determine their own healthcare. Graduates are encouraged to do community based education in their neighborhoods with the maxim, “Each one TEACH ten!” FIGHT designed a formal peer education program in 2001 that initially trained a small handful of TEACH grads to sit in clinic waiting rooms and talk to folks living with HIV, offer a supportive ear, and help folks see that you can live with HIV. Though it was not initially conceived as a work-force program, FIGHT’s first TEACH peers were able to leverage this work to find employment in the field later on. Since 2011, 57,712 people in Philadelphia have been trained by FIGHT Peers, including 11,942 educated by the Peer Education Team in 2016.
GPHP’s next meeting will be held at 8:30 AM on July 25th, at the District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund’s Breslin Learning Center (10th Floor of the Land Title Building, at 100 South Broad Street) Dr. Paul Harrington, Director of the Drexel University Center for Labor Markets & Policy (CLMP) will present findings from a GPHP-sponsored return-on-investment (ROI) study by Drexel CLMP. Dr. Harrington will be joined by Laurie Dugan, an e-Learning Account Executive at Collegis Professional.
The Greater Philadelphia Healthcare Partnership (GPHP) offers our partner organizations free to highly-discounted employer-driven health and human services training – on-site, off-site, or co-located, and “off the rack” or customized to meet our individual employer partners’ unique training needs. We offer skills training for incumbent workers, as well as subsidizing structured on-the-job training for new hires, and Registered Apprenticeship programs for incumbent workers or new hires.
If you are interested in learning more about GPHP or any of our projects, please contact
GPHP Director Susan B. Thomas at 215-568-2220, ext. 5102, or send an email to sthomas@1199ctraining.org.
You can also find us online at www.greaterphilahealthcare.org, or connect with us on Facebook (/GreaterPhilaHealthcare) and Twitter (@PhilaHCPartners). We hope that you will join us for July’s meeting.