You’re Invited: Lunch & Learn with AHEC!

Erie Niagara AHEC partnered with AHEC sites across NYS to host a lunch and learn webinar series! The NYS AHEC Building Better Health series is focused on pressing issues in healthcare, public health, and intersections between health and society. We kicked off the series on September 10 by bringing in Tarja Parsinnen and Dr. Andy Aligne to present Literacy: A Pillar of Public Health.

Tarja is the Director of the non-profit WNY Education Alliance, which is the founding partner of the WNY Literacy Initiative, a collaborative effort of 30 organizations whose mission is to improve literacy rates in Western New York, especially in underserved communities. Tarja leads WNY LIT: Literacy Instructors Together, a professional development community dedicated to learning opportunities around evidence-based reading instruction, and is a member of the P-20 Partnerships Working Group for the NYS Path Forward. The organization seeks to improve literacy instruction in schools by supporting and integrating the science of reading into teacher preparation program curricula and certification requirements.

Dr. Aligne is the Director of the Hoekelman Center in Rochester. The Hoekelman Center for Health Beyond Medicine is a national leader for education in community pediatrics and advocacy, a laboratory for original scientific research on community-level health improvement, a place to find resources for linking physicians, parents and others with community services, and a consulting partner for the planning, implementation or evaluation of evidence-based community-level health improvement projects and community based projects.

In our time, we discussed the disparities in literacy rates seen in NYS, the breadth and depth of this issue as a public health crisis, and what we as a community can do to help ameliorate these disparities in our own communities. A call to action was made for parents and providers alike to be leaders and advocates for their children in their literacy journeys – both inside and outside of school. You can view the recording of our session on our events page of our website.

AHECs across NYS are excited to bring this series to our communities! Webinars are held monthly over Zoom and are open for all to attend. We hope to see you at our upcoming sessions! Click the link to learn about what topics we cover and register for an upcoming webinar: linktr.ee/AHECeducate_NY