VHIO’s Community Health Awareness Program serves the limited English proficiency community in the San Francisco Bay Area by providing educational workshops in the audience’s native language about topics in healthcare and wellness at accessible locations. We strive to deliver informative and accurate information to dispel any myths about health using simple language backed by a strong scientific and cultural basis.

We tailor our workshops to different audience demographics. Given our languages of service, we can present in one language to the audience or have presenters who can speak different languages to different audience members. We can also provide our services in English, with language interpretation for specific audience members who cannot understand English well. Please see below for our offered languages.

If you work with a community that could benefit from our workshops or have a venue where we could provide our workshops, please contact us. For more information about our program, please email us at cal.vhio@gmail.com. Information on how to contact is listed at the bottom of this page.

Languages we offer:

  • Mandarin
  • Cantonese
  • Vietnamese
  • Spanish
  • Korean
  • Tagalog

Workshop topics we offer:

  • Nutrition
  • Introduction to Cancer
  • Osteoporosis, Arthritis, and Pain Management
  • Cardiovascular Disease
  • Diabetes
  • Vision
  • Dentistry

We can also present other health topics of your choice if requested at least one month in advance.

Workshop Format
Our workshops can range from 45-90 minutes, covering background information, relevant risk factors, prevention and screening, dispelling of myths, and a Q&A session.

Our presenters provide handouts in the target language.

Volunteer Qualifications
Our student interpreters are selected after a rigorous screening for language proficiency. Afterwards, they are trained through a student-led course adapted from the Oakland Asian Health Service’s 57-hour LCAP (Language and Cultural Access Program) curriculum. You can refer to our training for more information.

Our Educational Materials
The educational material for CHAP is carefully curated using reputable textbooks or recent papers, and CHAP curriculum masters draw on the multiple resources they are given in the biology or public health courses that they take at UC Berkeley. The outlines for our presentations are carefully annotated with the source of our information, and the annotated outline or bibliography for individual topics can be provided on request. For example, our Introduction to Cancer presentation draws on (among other sources) Weinberg’s Biology of Cancer, Human Reproductive Biology, and Lehinger Principles of Biochemistry.

Interested? Contact Us!
If you are interested in our Community Health Awareness Program workshops, please send us an email at cal.vhio@gmail.com with the following information:

  • Your name and site location
  • Languages and demographics of your intended audience (e.g. the proportion of people who speak a particular language, the age group, etc.)
  • Possible dates and times you’d like the workshop to be held
  • Workshop content that you are interested in as listed in our topics above
  • How frequently you’d like our workshops to be presented
    • We can provide a one time workshop
    • We can provide multiple workshops as a series of different topics in different weeks
    • We can provide multiple workshops of the same topic if not all audience can attend at the same time
    • Alternative arrangements can be made according to your need and our availability
  • How large the expected audience is
  • Any additional arrangements you need or other questions and concerns
Community Health Awareness Program