Tool Kit Team Biographies

    Joel S. Meister served as the Principal Investigator of the Community Health Worker Evaluation Tool Kit from 1998-2000.  While working on the Tool Kit, Dr. Meister was the Co-Director of the Southwest Center for Community Health Promotion and research associate professor of public health at the Arizona College of Public Health.  His primary interests are in community health, health policy, social justice and advocacy.

Dr. Meister has been working with US-Mexico border communities for nearly 20 years, beginning with the first statewide Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program in Arizona.  He was the principal investigator of the Comienzo Sano program, which brought the promotora/community health worker model to the Arizona border for the first time in 1987.  That program went on to become Arizona’s state-funded “Health Start” program, one of the very few promotora programs to receive ongoing public funding.

From 1993-1994, Dr. Meister directed the community health programs at Mariposa Community Health Center in Nogales.  From 1994-1997 he was assistant director of the Arizona Department of Health Services for disease prevention and health promotion.  Under his leadership, Arizona’s office of border health was established and Arizona’s Tobacco Education and Prevention Program was designed and implemented.

    Eva M. Moya served as the Project Director for the Community Health Worker's Evaluation Tool Kit Project during its development from 1998-2001.  She is a native of the El Paso/Juarez U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.  Eva received a Master of Science degree in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Work from the University of Texas at El Paso.

With more than 18 years of professional experience in the U.S.-Mexico Border region, she is considered one of the area's top health care professionals.  Her expertise includes binational, cross-border and migrant community health education, and work with community-based programs, Community Health Workers/Promotores(as) de Salud, non-governmental organizations, community health centers and academic institutions.  She served as president of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Association during the 1999-2000 term.

From 1993 to 1998, she participated in the Kellogg National Leadership Program and conducted study travel to India, Mexico, Nepal, Brazil, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, China, South Africa, Italy and Greece.

She works on a number of on-going initiatives, taking different responsibilities.  These include Program Manager for the Healthy Border 2010 Program of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission.  From 1995-2001 she was the Senior Program Coordinator for the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Collaborative Outreach Project "Border Vision Fronteriza Initiative" with the University of Arizona.  She has served as the Project Co-Director for the Community Access Program of Arizona: CAPAZ.  She is currently the Acting Director US –Mexico Border Health Commission.

    E. Lee Rosenthal worked on the Community Health Worker (CHW) Evaluation Tool Kit (Tool Kit) project from its inception, building on the Annie E. Casey-funded National Community Health Advisor Study she directed.  As a part of the Tool Kit team Lee developed the River of Program Life exercise and CHW evaluation case studies.  She also oversaw development and pilot testing of the Tool Kit’s CHW Cost-Benefit Primer.

Lee has worked nationally as an advocate for the CHW field.  As a part of this she has helped to build the Community Health Worker Special Primary Interest Group of the American Public Health Association.  She is an Advisory Committee member of the national Center for Sustainable Community Health Outreach.   She also served as a member of the National Expert Panel to the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Evaluation of Community Health Workers.

In 2001, Lee formed Mesa Public Health Associates, a small national consulting firm based in Tucson, Arizona; she serves as its Co-Director.  Her projects to-date have included training on evaluation and long-term planning for CHWs and interdisciplinary teams; supporting development of college-based CHW curricula; and working with CHW groups to build planning, evaluation, and advocacy skills.

Lee holds a doctoral degree in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Her dissertation research looks at policy options for sustaining community-based public health services. Lee also holds a Master's degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley.

Katie Careaga, M.P.H., has worked in public health education, program planning, implementation, and evaluation since 1998. She has worked closely with Community Health Worker programs and in Border Health as a Research Specialist at the University of Arizona and Health Educator for Pima County Government. After returning from a 9-month stay in Chiapas, Mexico, she began her current position as Border Epidemiologist at the Arizona Department of Health Service's Office of Border Health.

June Grube Robinson, MPH, has worked with community health workers and community health programs for the past twenty years. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, she worked with Community Health Aides who were employed to improve childhood nutrition in their local communities. In the U.S., she worked for eight years with Migrant Health Promotion, an award-winning community health program addressing the needs of migrant farmworkers in their communities. As Program Director, she was responsible for program development, evaluation and oversight. Currently, June resides in Everett, Washington with her family, where she is employed by Community Health Center of Snohomish County. She is now the Practice Manager of a medical clinic and has previously held positions there as Health Planner and Patient Support Services Manager. She received her Masters in Public Health degree from the University of Michigan.