Oregon Health Authority AmeriCorps VISTA Partnership Project

The Oregon Health Authority AmeriCorps VISTA Partnership Project aims to alleviate, prevent and reduce poverty by engaging new public health professionals in a year of full-time service in major public health organizations to create or expand public health systems capacity. The project aims to reduce poverty in our communities by building sustainable public health programs and systems that ensure health equity, community resiliency and improved health outcomes.

AmeriCorps VISTA members serve full-time, forty hours per week in a capacity building role in statewide organizations, local public health departments, Tribal governments or non-profits across the state of Oregon. Our members serve in areas of: community partnership development, health equity, volunteer recruitment and training, fundraising, communication and marketing, communicable disease prevention, and more. Work is done in an indirect service and capacity building role in a professional office setting and there are many opportunities for training and professional development. AmeriCorps members with OHA focus their efforts on building the organizational, administrative, and financial capacity of organizations that improve health services. They develop programs to meet a need, write grants, and recruit and train volunteers. 

In August 2019 the OHA AmeriCorps VISTA Partnership Project celebrated it's 10th year and conducted a program evaluation, culminating in a report A Summary Evaluation: Looking Back at Ten Years of Individual, Organizational, and System-Level Impacts (2009 – 2019). The evaluation explored the program’s impact on AmeriCorps members, the public health workforce, organizations AmeriCorps members serve with, public health systems AmeriCorps members have developed or reinforced, and poverty alleviation.