By Arundhati Parmar, MedCity News, July 30, 2019
As the founding executive director of the Penn Center for Community Health Workers, a national center of excellence, Kangovi wants to translate nationwide the success Penn Medicine has seen in implementing the community health worker program she helped develop.
“If you look at the map of the United States there are hot spots where where we can clearly see life expectancy being determined by where you live and your income. So If you drill into those hot spots, you see real life issues – things like housing, transportation, trauma, child care.” Kangovi, who is trained physician, said in a recent interview in her office in downtown Philadelphia. “My center’s catchphrase to get us out of bed in the morning is ‘we want to make those red hot spots blue.’ ”
Philadelphia is no stranger to this “hot spots” phenomenon with life expectancies varying disturbingly between zip codes barely a few miles apart. And as Kangovi began researching community health worker programs in 2010, what became clear is that people represent the cornerstone of any successful, evidence-based, scientifically-developed CHW program that aims to address the social determinants of health. There aren’t any tech-based silver bullets.
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