Cheryl Seay, a community health worker at Penn Medicine at Home, said that for many people, health is usually not the first priority because they have to work hard to pay bills, support a family, or find a place to live and other living environment and responsibilities.

She said that community health workers support patients in setting goals and working to improve their overall condition while meeting patients’ health needs.

In conducting multiple randomized controlled trials, Penn Medicine found that community health workers can improve a series of results through chronic disease control, cancer screening, better accessibility and quality of care, Kangovi said, resulting in a 65% reduction in hospitalization rates.

She said that by working with individuals for six months, community health workers can save $4,200 for each Medicaid beneficiary, and for every $1 spent in the current fiscal year, the return on investment is $2.47.

Penn Medicine assists 50 different payers, providers, public health departments, and other organizations in 20 states to develop blueprints to build and run successful community health worker programs. Kangovi said the organization has also developed a 12-month executive education program to give top leaders and community health workers the opportunity to learn from each other.

Adaptation discomfort: how racism and colonialism affect health

Dr. Rupa Marya, associate professor of medicine at the university, said that in order to reorganize the medical power system and make effective changes, healthcare professionals need to understand the starting point of these systems and take steps to dismantle them in California and San Francisco.

“In every health parameter, you will see the same layout of how racism spreads in people’s bodies,” Maria said.

Most medical racism in the United States began when scientists portrayed false and negative images of African Americans in support of the economic system of slavery, and established long-standing medical concepts such as biological dimorphism, believing that the black body is completely different from the white body , Said Harriet Washington, author, medical ethicist, and author of “Medical Apartheid.”