Abstract
To explore facilitators and barriers to developing and sustaining collaboration among New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Neighborhood Health Action Centers and co-located partners, who share information and decision-making through a Governance Council structure of representative members. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2018 with 43 Governance Council members across the three Action Centers of East Harlem (13), Tremont (15), and Brownsville (15), New York City. Governance Council members identified collaboration through information- and resource-sharing, consistent meetings and continuous communication as valuable for fostering a culture of health in their communities. Immediate benefits included building relationships, increased access to resources, and increased reach and access to community members. Challenges included difficulty building community trust, insufficient advertisement of services, and navigation of government bureaucracy. The Governance Councils forged collaborative relationships among local government, community-based organizations and clinical providers to improve health and well-being in their neighborhoods. Sharing space, resources and information is feasible with a movement towards shared leadership and decision-making. This may result in community-driven and tailored solutions to historical inequities. In shared leadership models, some internal reform by Government partners may be required.
Highlights
Concurrent with growing recognition that social and structural factors heavily impact health and well-being [1, 2], variables such as geographic location and social environment have been identified as crucial determinants of personal and population health [3]
Journal of Community Health (2020) 45:871–879 health outcomes [4,5,6]. These neighborhoods have the highest rates of premature mortality and chronic disease in New York City, with cancer, heart disease, HIV, and drug-related conditions being among the leading causes of premature mortality (Table 1) [7,8,9]
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Health Department) takes an intentional approach to improving community health through a place-based model which addresses health determinants and their root causes. One such approach was the development of Neighborhood Health Action Centers (Action Center) as part of a neighborhood health strategy to invest in historically disinvested neighborhoods which bear disproportionate burdens of premature mortality
Summary
Concurrent with growing recognition that social and structural factors heavily impact health and well-being [1, 2], variables such as geographic location and social environment have been identified as crucial determinants of personal and population health [3]. For New York City residents living in neighborhoods like East Harlem, Tremont and Brownsville, historical injustices, racist practices and policies have worsened environmental conditions and perpetuated poor
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have