Georgia CTSA's Adrianne Serrano Proeller Selected as National Association of Community Health Workers Ambassador

The National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) has designated Adrianne Serrano Proeller as a 2019 NACHW Ambassador. As a Community Health Worker (CHW) through the Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance’s (Georgia CTSA) Community Engagement program, Proeller was selected based on her commitment and dedication to the CHW workforce.

Tabia Henry Akintobi, PhD, MPH, director of Georgia CTSA’s Community Engagement program remarked, “Adrianne’s designation as a National Association of Community Health Worker is a terrific award for our community engagement collaboration, as, to-date, she is the only 2019 NACHW Ambassador in the state of Georgia. She exemplifies the type of leadership needed for research teams to move from translational research to improving community health. In addition to being a vital member of the Community Engagement program, Adrianne is a tremendous community leader and supports our vision – leading the creation and advancement of health equity.”

Proeller has worked as a community health worker for Morehouse School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center (PRC) since July 2015. She was previously a member of the PRC Community Coalition Board, which continues to work cooperatively with communities to develop, implement and evaluate research, health promotion, policy, systems and environment change initiatives through a community-based participatory approach.

Over the past three years, Proeller has coordinated community participation for the research projects, and other initiatives and collaborations designed to eliminate health disparities and improve population health in underserved communities. Beyond her work through the PRC, Proeller’s local leadership has received community service awards from the Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., and she was recognized by Georgia House Representative, Park Cannon, in her inaugural remarks on her opening day at the Capital last year.

Georgia CTSA’s Community Engagement is a core component of a collaborative effort between Emory University, Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and University of Georgia (UGA). The program improves the way biomedical research is conducted and disseminated throughout Georgia and across the country. It works to unite existing academic-community research partnerships, facilitate community input into university research, and to increase health research in community settings that is both responsive and relevant to the health needs of the community.

The Georgia CTSA is a statewide partnership between Emory, MSM, Georgia Tech, and UGA and is one of over 50 in a national consortium striving to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The consortium, funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards, shares a common vision to translate laboratory discoveries into treatments for patients, engage communities in clinical research efforts, and train the next generation of clinical investigators.