By Santos Barrientes, Senior Community Outreach Specialist for Health Confianza, CHW, CHWI
As students head back to school, families are preparing for a busy season of learning, activities, and new routines. It’s also the start of fall and winter, when illnesses like colds, flu, COVID-19, RSV, and strep throat become more common. With so much health information available, it can be hard to know what to trust and when it’s time to see a doctor.
That’s where health literacy can help. Health literacy is about finding, understanding, and using health information to make informed decisions. It means knowing when to stay home, when to seek medical care, understanding what your child’s symptoms may mean, and feeling comfortable asking questions if something isn’t clear. Health information should be easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to use.
Back-to-school season is also a great time to schedule annual checkups, make sure vaccines are up to date, and talk with your child’s healthcare provider about any questions or concerns. Preventive care helps keep children healthy throughout the school year—not just when they get sick. Bringing a list of questions to appointments and talking openly with your healthcare team are simple steps that can make a big difference.
In this issue, we’re featuring the Health Confianza Health Journey Roadmap for Parents of Children and Teens. Plus, “Tips for Parents: Talking about Your Child’s Health,” “A Teen Guide to a Healthy Back-to-School,” and a “Building Confianza Summit Recap.”
The roadmap for parents of children and teens — which is part of our Health Begins with Confianza preventive health campaign — is a practical guide to help families stay on track with their child’s health each year. The roadmap walks families through recommended checkups, screenings, vaccines, and important health conversations based on a child’s age. It also encourages parents to write down questions before appointments, keep vaccine records up to date, and remember that asking questions is an important part of caring for your child’s health. We hope this resource helps you feel more confident navigating the school year and making informed health decisions for your family.
Here’s to a healthy school year! May your backpacks be packed, your lunchboxes come home empty, and your thermometers stay tucked away in the medicine cabinet.
San Antonio, TEXAS — The beginning of the school year is filled with new experiences, from meeting new friends and teachers to learning class schedules and morning routines. Things can move fast and before you know it, you’ve settled into daily school life.
This school year, we want you to pause, take it all in, and bookmark this page if you need support.
To start, take a moment to see that everyone is trying their best to adjust to new environments and meet new challenges. There will be times when you don’t get it right, or your friends don’t get it right, and that’s okay.
UT Teen Health, a program housed at UT Health San Antonio that provides teen-focused health training and support to the community, put together six quick tips to help you have a healthy school year.
Make Time for Preparation
No matter where you are in the school year, you can set up a nightly and morning routine to help you feel as ready as possible for navigating busy school days. Prioritizing sleep, pre-making healthy lunches, moving your body, setting up study hours, and limiting screen time can help you feel rested, organized, and ready to tackle the day.
Learn to Manage School Stress
Not surprisingly, your school life will have stress, and that feeling of stress, pressure or worry can affect your mind and/or body. It is important to remember that stress is a normal response to life’s changes, pressures, and challenges. On the positive side, these emotions can help motivate you to get ready for what’s ahead, according to Nemours Teen Health, which is part of a pediatric health system. At UT Teen Health, our health educators focus on helping teens learn how to build resilience, a skill that helps you better cope with stressors throughout life. One of the resources we recommend is UT Teen’s Project Yes, a partnership with Northwestern University and Koko that provides evidence-based, online learning modules for teens who may be feeling anxiety and stress. Project YES shows participants different ways of dealing with stress through real life stories, interactive activities and examples.
Find more tips and information on everything from Keeping Stress in Check to Talking to a Therapist on Nemours Teen Health.
Practice Healthy Social Media Use
When you’re feeling bored, lonely, exhausted or worried, one of the easiest things to do is to open an app for an instant distraction. Before turning to a screen, try prioritizing activities such as getting outside, reading, listening to music, or playing sports. Remember, you are in control of your social media use. Check out these Tips for Teens: Healthy Social Media Use from the University of Utah.
Learn to Ask for Help or Support
It’s never too early to ask for help or support when you are dealing with a difficult change, issue or situation at school or at home. You can talk to your parents about your feelings and concerns. If you don’t feel comfortable going to them, you can identify other trusted adults such as a school nurse, counselor, or teacher who can help. If you need tips on how to start those conversations, visit Nemour Teen Health’s article on Asking for Help: Getting Past Obstacles.
Cultivate Healthy Relationship Skills
Relationships are a big part of life, whether it is a relationship with a parent, sibling, friend, teammate or romantic partner. Learning how to recognize the traits of a healthy relationship, as well as the signs of an unhealthy relationship, is an important first step. The good news is that we can all build healthy relationship skills, from communication to emotional regulation (your ability to manage big feelings—like anger, sadness, or excitement—so they do not overwhelm you), no matter your age. Find tips for a healthy relationship here.
Stay on Top of Your Health
One key to good health is knowing and engaging in the four dimensions of preventive health — check-ups and screenings, vaccines, mental health and lifestyle. For teens (and parents of teens), it is important to know what you need for your specific stage of life, including vaccines that can prevent certain types of cancer (HPV vaccine). The roadmap can also guide you on what conversations you may want to have with a health provider, such as talks about body changes, acne treatment and/or risky behaviors. Visit the Health Confianza’s roadmap for kids and teens to help you and your parents know what to do.
San Antonio, TEXAS — Parents and caregivers of children with chronic illness or special needs can find keeping up with medical appointments, managing multiple providers, and discussing treatment options challenging.
Enter the health communication experts at Kennedy Krieger Institute, located in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. region, who created a series of resources and videos to help parents prepare for medical appointments and navigate difficult conversations. Importantly, the institute also offers tips on communicating with healthcare providers in between appointments.
View the “Communicating Well With Your Child’s Healthcare Providers” infographic below:
San Antonio, Texas — An individual’s health literacy — the ability to find, understand and use health information — can vary during one’s life. Most all of us will find ourselves needing support at one point or another.
Because of that, Health Confianza’s co-director Jason Rosenfeld wanted to train community members to serve as Ambassadors, providing health information and local resources to community members where and when they need it.
Enter the Confianza Ambassador Program with the goal of creating a bridge between healthcare and the community. To begin, Health Confianza and its partners identified 15 trusted and respected community leaders who were motivated to serve as community educators and resources for the greater community.
The Confianza Ambassadors were selected for their ability to be local champions, people who can build connections with hard-to-reach populations and create innovative health messaging.
Over a period of months, the Ambassadors were trained to deliver scientifically accurate preventive health information, that is both culturally and linguistically appropriate. The Ambassadors would meet weekly to receive training on topics including teach-back (a method for sharing health information) and community outreach.
There were eight in-person sessions followed by monthly check-in meetings to discuss upcoming opportunities, challenges and share resources.
Stand-out Ambassador
One Ambassador, Jessica Route, saw the program as a great match for her life experiences and personal desire to serve.
Route was approached with the opportunity to become a Health Confianza Ambassador while she was working for WestCare Texas in its Americorp program as an HIV peer navigator. Under WestCare Texas, she also received her medical assistant and phlebotomy certifications last year. This year, she moved into a position as an Opiate Impacted Family Support Navigator.
Jessica Route of WestCare Texas was one of 15 Ambassadors trained by Health Confianza.
“I like being impactful and helping community members. My life’s ambition is to give back to the community, so I’ve seen it as an opportunity to not only learn for myself but also to help others,” Route said.
Route’s experience as an HIV navigator motivated her to want to improve her skills in communicating complex health issues and resources.
“I suppose it’s the lack of education that causes a stigma around HIV, because of what they don’t know. But if they understood better, there would be less for them to fear,” she said. “Not everyone is on the same level. There are barriers and sometimes it just takes being able to explain to them the simplest things, so they’ll understand the bigger things.”
Route said going through the Ambassador program, including delivering a final presentation, helped to boost her confidence in working with people who are living with HIV.
Along with her work with WestCare, she considers herself an “alumna” of Corazon Ministries, which helps houseless individuals in addiction with services, food, housing and other resources. Route stays active with Corazon Ministries and volunteers at Travis Park Church.
In her work as an Ambassador, Route engaged in a mix of activities, from creating social media posts and flyers to attending events and having one-on-one conversations with community. She enjoyed creating a flyer on respiratory illnesses from scratch, which included an explanation of how the respiratory system works.
“What Health Confianza did was educate and inform me, and I was able to share some of that with the community,” she said.
As part of the program, Ambassadors met regularly to share information and work through challenges.
“When I go to a meeting, I feel like we can narrow down (an issue) and get on the same page. I also appreciate sharing resources. There are some many resources that people don’t know about it. They may not even use the internet for whatever reason, so word of mouth is how they learn about things,” she said.
The Ambassador program is “the opportunity to be a bridge. To connect people to resources and information services that they may not know is available. And it feels powerful to be that link between confusion and clarity,” Route said.
San Antonio, Texas — In 2025, Health Confianza set out to deliver a virtual learning series on health literacy, a topic that may not be on every health professional’s radar but has the potential to transform how they communicate with patients and clients.
Health Confianza, a health literacy program housed at The University of Texas at San Antonio, provides workforce training, health education, community outreach and health communication services. The program targets health professionals, community health workers, students and others interested in leveraging health literacy best practices to improve the health outcomes of communities.
The web series, titled “Communicating with Confianza – a health literacy ECHO,” attracted more than 270 registrants (an average of 40 participants per session) from Texas and 11 other states, and as far away as Mexico, India and Uganda.
It was delivered in partnership with ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), an evidence-based workforce training model that connects specialist hubs with healthcare and public health professionals to improve service delivery through peer to peer and case-based learning .
“Communicating with Confianza is one of our most popular ECHOs to date,” said Jason Rosenfeld, DrPH, MPH, CHWI, co-director of Health Confianza, director of Global Health, The University of Texas at San Antonio. “One reason is that there is a growing understanding of the importance of health literacy in addressing health inequities. Professionals are looking for effective ways to reach people, build trust and create positive experiences. Through this ECHO model, we are able to offer relevant topics, first class presenters, and an interactive format with case study discussions.”
Communicating with Confianza was comprised of two six-part sessions (during the fall of 2025 and concluding in the spring of 2026) designed to provide health literacy training, resources, and knowledge-sharing for Bexar County and surrounding communities.
Health Confianza collaborated with professionals from YWCA San Antonio, South Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC), and the UT Health San Antonio ECHO team to design and deliver the series. Together they formed the ECHO HUB team, a multidisciplinary group of subject matter experts—including specialists, clinicians, and educators.
We asked one member of the ECHO HUB team what she thought the secret was to Communicating with Confianza’s success.
“This ECHO program has really great reach, interaction, and learning,” said Angela Reilly Cruz, senior community outreach coordinator, UT San Antonio, “The conversations are dynamic and engaging. I think what has made it so successful is the community engagement, excellent HUB team, and strong presence that Health Confianza has.”
The ECHO organizers invited presenters from The University of Texas at San Antonio, The University of Texas at Austin, and the San Antonio Nursing Consortium, among other institutions, to speak on health literacy-related topics, including: Shaking the Shame and Blame from Clinical Practice; Use of Plain Language; Bridging the Gap with Teach-Back; and Internet Literacy.
Who logged on?
Besides the topics, another thing that sets the Communicating with Confianza ECHO apart from other training programs is that it drew a diversity of health professionals which led to interesting questions and dialogue. The ECHO drew nurses, caregivers, case managers, elementary school teachers, epidemiologists, primary care physicians, nutritionists, public health officials and more.
At the end of each session, a volunteer from the community of participants would present a case study for discussion.
“Each real-life case study drew out a rich conversation between participants and a sharing of resources and tools,” said Melanie Stone, DrPH, MEd, co-director of Health Confianza, Assistant Professor of Family & Community Medicine and Director of Community Engaged Learning. “Giving people the platform to discuss real-life challenges is one of the best learning tools at our disposal in healthcare.”
ECHO participants surveyed after sessions were largely impressed with the format and case discussions.
Some of the commenters said they enjoyed learning new information, sharing cases from across the state, receiving new tools such as visual aids, and becoming introduced to new approaches, such as how to interact effectively with patients. Several people complimented the Teach-Back presentation by Melanie Stone, who was also part of the ECHO Hub team.
All sessions are available on the ECHO website: https://wp.uthscsa.edu/echo/echo-programs/communicating-with-confianza-a-health-literacy-echo/
San Antonio, TEXAS —During our May 15th Building Confianza health literacy summit, we honored the incredible individuals and organizations that have gone above and beyond to champion health literacy and community well-being through the first-ever Confianza Awards ceremony. From our dedicated Community Health Clubs and Ambassadors to our transformative Pledge Program and Main Partners, each award represents a commitment to a healthier Bexar County.
Community Health Club
Our first award went to our most active Community Health Clubs. These peer-led groups are the heartbeat of our wellness initiatives, providing essential education on the health topics that matter most to our community. For their tireless work in inspiring healthier lifestyles and strengthening our collective well-being, we are proud to recognize them today.
Country Club Village
Corazones de Westside (St. Timothy’s)
Sunshine Club
Victoria Plaza
Hidden Hearts Health Club
Rancho Sierra Health Club
SETC Health Club
Pledge Program Members
We spotlighted The Pledge Program, an innovative health literacy initiative from Health Confianza. In celebration of our second cohort of organizations, which devoted staff time and talent to become a more health literate organization.
Big Mama’s Safe House
Family Service
Patriot Vita Care
Raindrop Foundation
The South-Central Area Health Education Center
The Institute for Public Health and Education
Peer Mentors
We recognized our peer mentors for their vital support during this program. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and turning potential into purpose. (Award)
Angelita Negron. Program Director at Empower House San Antonio
Jessica Rios. Health Equity Director at Community First Health Plans.
Pledge Mentors
In appreciation of everything they’ve done to champion health literacy.
Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, Assistant Professor Tufts University
Gail Nielsen Faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Lindsay Rosenfeld, Health literacy instructor at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Teresa Wagner, Assistant professor UNT Health Fort Worth
Ambassadors
We also recognized the following Ambassadors for their outstanding dedication to the community. Their leadership is creating a powerful, lasting impact exactly where it’s needed most.
Lisa Ezpinoza
Jessica Route
Candi Diaz
Alicia Sanchez-Esquivel
Main Partners
We honored our main partners. These organizations are the cornerstone of our collective impact, turning shared vision into community reality.
YWCA San Antonio: We recognize your team’s collaboration and commitment to advancing health and creating opportunities for all of Bexar County.
South Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC): We honor your team’s dedication to advancing healthcare knowledge and expanding access throughout our region.
WestCare Texas: Thank you for your team’s commitment to health prevention and for building a more resilient, healthier Bexar County.
Southside Collaborative: We celebrate your team’s collaborative leadership and community-centered approach to addressing the unique needs of South Bexar County.
This article was contributed by Ana Pineda, MPH, Research Coordinator-Senior at UT Health San Antonio
San Antonio, TEXAS — Health Confianza and its partners – South Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC), Southside Collaborative, YWCA San Antonio and WestCare Texas – Ella Austin – celebrated the end of a two-year grant at the Building Confianza: Voices, Lesson and Actions health literacy summit on May 15th at Texas A&M San Antonio.
The free summit was a community-focused wrap-up of a grant from Bexar County Public Health, which supported workforce training, health webinars, mobile clinics, community health clubs, organizational health literacy, technology and health communications. The event attracted community members, health professionals, nonprofit leaders, public health professionals and more. In all, more than 120 attendees participated in the day’s activities.
Special guests included Claude A. Jacob, DrPH, MPH, director of the City of San Antonio Metro Health, and Andrea Guerrero, PhD, MPH, director of Bexar County Public Health. Matthew Dacso, MD, MSc, FACP, Director of the Charles E. Cheever Jr. Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics served as MC for the interactive event.
Notably, the summit also had its first Confianza Awards, recognizing the many health professionals, nonprofit workers, community health workers and community members who have participated in one or more of our programs in effort to improve our community’s health and well-being.
During the summit, Health Confianza launched its Health Begins with Confianza campaign, a preventive health campaign comprised of free health roadmaps for men, women, babies, children/teen and older adults and other education tools. Health Confianza will host a free train-the-trainer session on the campaign that is open to students, community health workers, nonprofit and health professionals on July 8. The trainees will receive facilitator guides, showing community health workers and others how to share the roadmaps at health fairs, in classrooms, and in one-on-one settings.
To learn more about Health Confianza, visit Health Confianza.org and WellnessCultura.org.
San Antonio, Texas — Health Confianza created a Mad Lib-style fill-in-the-blank coloring sheet for adults and kids. The simple activity has taken off in our community. Feel free to download the “In the Community” coloring sheet for your own communities, and check out some of the responses from our partner WestCare Texas’s community members.
How Southside Collaborative delivered a masterclass in hosting resource fairs.
San Antonio, Texas — Southside Collaborative, a nonprofit serving San Antonio’s Southside and one of Health Confianza’s main partners, started out with a simple goal of bringing a health and resource fair to an area that faces many barriers to health and wellness. Thanks to invested community and partners, the first-ever Southside Collaborative’s Annual Health and Wellness Fiesta, turned into a health fair masterclass.
The event took place in October of 2025, drawing in upwards of 700 people and 65 vendors to the Rancho El Chema, a popular wedding and events venue on the Southside. Vendors delivered health screenings and vaccinations, dental checks, mammograms, kidney exams, and more.
While health and resource fairs often require months of planning and coordination, they offer a powerful way to connect communities with essential services in areas of high need. Southside Collaborative chose to host a fair in response to the Southside’s limited access to basic resources and community amenities.
From left, Southside Collaborative’s Edward Castillo, Mayra Carter and Pat Sanchez.
“There’s a lot of food scarcity. There’s no HEB or Walmart in the area. There’s no VIA bus line. There’s no hospital. There are a lot of barriers to health and wellness,” said Edward Castillo, director of Southside Collaborative. “We decided to hold this event and try to recruit as many different vendors as possible to provide services, like free health checks.”
Given they started planning in summer, what Southside accomplished in a few short months even surprised the organizers. The momentum for the event really took off because of community involvement, Castillo said.
“I really think that this event, and the success of this event, was a beautiful example of what happened when our coalition worked in partnership with the community,” he said.
Southside Collaborative held it’s first-ever resource fair attracting more than 65 vendors.
Demonstrating the impact of providing accessible health services on site, one vendor discovered an attendee had a life-threatening condition during a kidney screening. They provided medication on-site and directed them to emergency follow-up, potentially saving a life.
While the event had a serious goal to provide health services, the organizers also put emphasis on fun to attract families. There was an array of family-friendly activities, music, a dance floor, giveaways, and mascots for the children.
This transformed the event from a “resource fair” into an experience, Castillo said.
Health Confianza asked Castillo and marketing expert Donna Prado, who works with Southside Collaborative, about some of the key ingredients that led to the success of their first health fair. Below are their key takeaways:
Takeaways from Southside’s first Health & Wellness Fiesta
Deep Community Engagement
The Community Advisory Board (CAB) played a central role—suggesting vendors, identifying venues, spreading the word, and giving real-time feedback on community needs. Community members were genuinely invested because they helped shape the event. And their involvement helped to build trust, credibility and buzz.
Boots-on-the-Ground Marketing (Critical in Low-Internet Areas)
Flyers were handed out at churches, laundromats, businesses, football games, community events, and door-to-door because the area has limited Internet access.
Volunteers saturated the area to the point people were saying, “I’ve already heard about this.” This saturation built positive familiarity and anticipation.
Strong Partnerships with Local Organizations
Southside ISD was a major amplifier: ads on their Jumbotron, distribution of flyers through school principals, and support from their print shop. Local businesses were engaged intentionally—buying food, printing shirts, hosting signs—building reciprocal relationships that made them eager to help.
Choosing a Compelling Venue
The event hall was large, beautiful, and carried local curiosity (“I’ve driven by but never been inside.”). This “buzz factor” drew people who simply wanted to check it out. Ample space and parking (though parking still became an issue!) made the event feel professional and inviting.
Making It Fun and Family-Friendly
They intentionally made the event feel like a fiesta. There were plenty of volunteer mascots (Sparky, Smokey the Bear, McGruff, etc.) There were fire trucks and other kids’ attractions, which in turn bring their parents. There were also free food tickets to keep families on-site longer
Wide Variety of Vendors and Services
They crowdsourced vendor ideas through a shared Google Sheet. Over 75 vendors signed up; ~65 attended. They also focused on offering high-value resources: mammograms, kidney screenings, vaccinations, and wellness information.
They did plenty of follow-up with vendors to ensure high attendance and planning accuracy.
Flexible, Multichannel Marketing Strategy
Southside spent $300 on targeted Facebook ads (English + Spanish), resulting in approximately 20K impressions. Telemundo showed up unexpectedly and even MC’d, providing major visibility. And print materials were produced affordably via Southside ISD’s print shop.
Thoughtful Logistics & Lessons Learned
What worked:
Evergreen marketing assets (no dates on banners so they can be repurposed).
Weekly planning meetings.
Good vendor communication and confirmation.
What they want to improve next year:
More organized parking (overflow + shuttles).
A dedicated event webpage with maps, schedules, and vendor lists.
Earlier planning (start in January, not July).
A more intentional digital communication strategy with vendors, supported by a shared social media toolkit and recommended hashtags to encourage consistent, coordinated promotion.
San Antonio, Tx — Imagine engaging with a community and rapidly learning what people are thinking and feeling about their health and well-being.
As a core function of public health, the capacity to quickly turn data into action is highly valued, but often difficult to realize. At least until now.
Health Confianza is piloting a technological solution called the Community Microphone that allows people to record responses to questions in real time using a cellphone. Their responses are then automatically transcribed and summarized using AI. Public health professionals can further use AI to analyze these data in real time to draw insights, ask questions, and find common themes among responses.
“Although the health priorities and determinants may be similar across Bexar County, each community has its own strengths and challenges that must be acknowledged,” said Jason Rosenfeld, DrPH, MPH, CHWI, co-director of Health Confianza, director of Global Health, The University of Texas at San Antonio. “The Community Microphone gives us a way to hear directly from community about their concerns and solutions, in a non-intrusive way, so that we as public health professionals can better, and more rapidly, tailor our interventions.”
The tool helps reduce the time and manpower typically needed for community assessments using traditional data collection methods like surveys or focus groups. Because this system is automated, the microphone can be used anywhere, anytime, and eventually, in any language.
However, as with any new strategy, there are challenges to consider. Community health workers, who shared the community mics via a QR code on flyers, said that it can be difficult for phone microphones to record responses in noisy environments, such as health fairs. Additionally, the technology only records voice, which may be difficult for those who have difficulty speaking. Lastly, not all community members have access to smart phones.
Health Confianza partnered with Flourish, a Houston-based data analytics company, on the community microphone, which is one tool in a Salesforce-powered dashboard created to collect, manage, share and visualize program data. The company offers the community microphone tool as part of a dashboard, or it can be purchased separately.
“Together, Health Confianza and Flourish are identifying best practices around the use of the voice-based data collection and AI analysis via the community microphone tool in public health settings. We are excited to see how this tool can be replicated in other communities and brought to scale for the purpose of centering community voice in programs aimed at improving health and wellness,” said Aaron Godoy, co-founder, CTO, CEO at Flourish.
Community Mic Drop
In April of last year, Health Confianza and its partners —South Central Area Health Education Center (AHEC), Southside Collaborative, WestCare Texas, and YWCA San Antonio —launched the first community microphone with two simple prompts in English and Spanish.
What does health mean to you?
What is currently affecting you and your family’s health?
From April through May, Health Confianza and its four partners gathered community input at health fairs, club meetings, bulletin boards, etc. These five organizations collected more than 160 responses from people across Bexar County.
Overall, here’s what the respondents said should be addressed to create a healthier community:
Improved access to nutritious food and healthcare resources
Community support, education and prevention
Support to manage chronic health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension
Safe neighborhoods; freedom from fear of gun violence
Greater social connections and communal spaces for healthier living
Health Confianza’s team also created three infographics summarizing community responses from San Antonio’s Westside, Southside, Eastside, Central and Northside. The infographics cover three areas: major themes, barriers to health, and social/emotional needs and concerns.
“With this information, we and our partners are able to more rapidly respond to the needs and priorities of the communities we serve. We feel that our tailored responses will contribute to an increase in trust between our organizations and our community, resulting in sustained utilization of our information and services. We are excited to continue centering community voice in our programming via the Community Microphone while seeking additional tools for building and sustaining community trust.” Rosenfeld said.
See the infographics highlighting community voices below.
Major Themes Highlighted by Community
Barriers to Health Noted by Community
Social and Emotional Needs and Concerns from Community