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In This Issue:
One Year Later
A little more than a year ago, BWH entered into an innovative agreement with the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH), meeting the needs of both the RTH community and the hospital by preserving affordable housing for members of the Mission Hill neighborhood and assisting in the long-term growth needs of BWH.
As part of that agreement, BWH committed more than $1 million over a five-year period to enhance community programming – including job training and education, employment opportunities, asthma education, violence prevention education, and first aid and CPR training – for area residents.
In this first year of the action plan, eight community liaisons were employed to aid in the community needs assessment process, under the guidance of BWH’s Office for Women and Family Community Programs and Anne Vinnick, director of Program Development for RTH. The eight liaisons are residents of the RTH community, and span various age, gender, geographical and language groups.
“We wanted the community liaisons to be reflective of the RTH community overall,” said Judy Bigby, MD, director, Office for Women and Family Community Programs at BWH.
The liaisons underwent extensive training in community outreach, cultural competence, and the overall community assessment process. The past several months have seen that training launched into action. The liaisons have assisted in extensive outreach, participating in community walk-throughs, conducting interviews, and facilitating focus groups with area residents.
Liaisons worked eight to ten hours every week during the past summer months, meeting twice a week to go over their findings. During the final months of this year, the group helped to summarize all of the information, working on health care, family and educational resource mapping and identifying the main issues in the community. According to Bigby, results from the community needs assessment are expected to be released shortly, with action planning commencing soon after.