HEROs for Health—a documentary film about a unique program within The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (HSC) and a national model for improving community health—will broadcast on New Mexico PBS, KNME Channel 5.1, Thursday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. and Friday, Jan. 23 at 9 p.m. The film will be followed by a panel of health practitioners and policy experts discussing how to improve health care in New Mexico.
“HEROs” stands for Health Extension Rural Offices. Arthur Kaufman, MD, a distinguished professor of Family and Community Medicine in the UNM School of Medicine and vice president for Community Health, started the program a decade ago to link community health needs across the state to the University and other supportive resources.
“What we found over the years is that communities have a very good sense of their priority problems and what they need to address them,” Kaufman said. “What they don't always have are resources or technical expertise to address those problems. Many of the needed resources exist in higher education--colleges and universities, but communities may not know how to access them.”
Kaufman said he originally adapted the model from the agricultural extension system.
“There’s an agricultural extension agent in every county in the country, so why not deploy health extension agents in every county and interested Tribal communities in New Mexico, helping communities address the social determinates of health—the non-medical factors that so profoundly create barriers to health care.”
Through the HEROs program, he said community members can take a lead on identifying their own health needs and develop solutions with expert support and resources from various UNM departments and colleges. Those community members playing this extension role are called HERO agents.
The half-hour-long film follows five HERO agents, as they work to improve social drivers of health like housing, nutrition, income, education and transportation for rural and underserved families across New Mexico.
Danielle Archuleta, a HERO agent in Raton, works on inventive rehabilitation strategies with young people in legal difficulty. Evelyn Rising, a HERO agent in Hobbs, developed a social resource center and fosters economic opportunity for her community. Chantel Lovato, a HERO agent in Santa Rosa, works on housing and economic development. Zach and Mary Ben, a married couple in Shiprock who are both HERO agents, started a baby food company and a nutritional education campaign on the Navajo Nation. Sarita Cargas, PhD, an associate professor of Human Rights at UNM, and HERO agent Francisco Ronquillo, developed programs to address nutrition and housing insufficiencies among UNM and other New Mexico college students.
“New Mexico has 33 counties and 32 of them are classified as health underserved, there aren’t enough health practitioners, and there are long waits for care,” said Ben Daitz, MD, a family medicine professor who produced and directed the film.
“We’re in the middle of a health care crisis,” Daitz continued. “The UNM HEROs program helps address these problems by supporting the social determinates of health at a grass roots community level.”
Kaufman said the program does not replace the need for doctors, nurses and pharmacists in rural areas, but it does provide an extra layer of support and even solutions to problems unrelated to health care that still impact care quality and access.
“Every single aspect of higher education, whether it's arts and sciences, architecture, law, engineering—all of them have a contribution to make in their aspect of social determinants,” Kaufman said. “What HEROs do is they tap into the whole University's resources to help priority health needs in communities.”
Click here to read more about the recent partnership empowering HEROs.
Thumbnail Image: Photo collage with images from the documentary. Courtesy of KNME.
