Mobilizing the Community for Better Health

Mobilizing the Community for Better Health

What the Rest of America Can Learn from Northern Manhattan

  • Author: Formicola, Allan; Hernandez-Cordero, Lourdes
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • ISBN: 9780231151665
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780231525275
  • Place of publication:  New York , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2010
  • Month: November
  • Language: English
From 1999 to 2009, The Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative put Columbia University and its Medical Center in touch with surrounding community organizations and churches to facilitate access to primary care, nutritional improvement, and smoking cessation, and to broker innovative ways to access healthcare and other social services. This unlikely partnership and the relationships it forged reaffirms the wisdom of joining "town and gown" to improve a community's well-being.

Staff members of participating organizations have coauthored this volume, which shares the successes, failures, and obstacles of implementing a vast community health program. A representative of Alianza Dominicana, for example, one of the country's largest groups settling new immigrants, speaks to the value of community-based organizations in ridding a neighborhood of crime, facilitating access to health insurance, and navigating the healthcare system. The editors outline the beginnings and infrastructure of the collaboration and the relationship between leaders that fueled positive outcomes. Their portrait demonstrates how grassroots solutions can create productive dialogues that help resolve difficult issues.
  • Table of Contents
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • Foreword
  • Acknowledgments
  • PART I: BEGINNINGS
  • Introduction: The Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative
  • 1. Creating the Collaborative Foundation
  • 2. The Collaborative Structure and the Challenges We Faced
  • PART II: PROMOTING HEALTH AND PRIMARY CARE
  • 3. Community Health Workers: A Successful Strategy for Restoring the Health of a Community
  • 4. Asthma Basics for Children Initiative (ABC): Building an Asthma Support System from the Ground Up
  • 5. Start Right Coalition: Building on Community Initiatives for Childhood Immunization Promotion
  • 6. The Legacy Smoking-Cessation Project
  • PART III: STRENGTHENING THE SAFETY NET
  • 7. Salud a Su ALcance (SASA): Health Within Your Reach
  • 8. Health Information Tool for Empowerment (HITE): Making Health Care Resources a Mouse Click Away
  • 9. HealthGap and the NMCVC's Effor to Cover the Uninsured
  • 10. Healthy Choices: Mobilizing Community Assets to Combat the Twin Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes
  • PART IV: PROVIDING DENTAL AND MENTAL HEALTH CARE
  • 11. Columbia Community DentCare Program
  • 12. Mental Health Policy Paper: Giving Voice to a Neglected Epidemic
  • 13. The Thelma C. Davidson Adair Medical/Dental Center
  • PART V: SUMMING UP AND SCALING UP
  • 14. Summing Up
  • 15. Scaling Up
  • Epilogue
  • Acronyms Used in the Book
  • List of Contributors
  • Index

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