General Membership Meeting
Wednesday, December 5, 2007, 2:30pm – 4:30pm
Brooklyn Central Library

Welcoming Remarks
Brian Palmer, Vice President, GBHC and Associate Executive Director, Coney Island Hospital

Brian Palmer welcomed seventy-two representatives from member organizations and guests to GBHC’s Fall 2007 General Membership Meeting. He spoke briefly about the ten-year history of GBHC, and the crucial space it has provided for relationship building among organizations.  Mr. Palmer noted that one of the major themes and a key part of GBHC’s mission throughout the years has been to highlight issues of healthcare access in Brooklyn.  He went on to say that in addition to improving access to healthcare, GBHC has been providing organizations and individuals with ‘access to each other’ through meetings such as this one. 

Recent Achievements
Kimberly George, Executive Director, GSBHC

Kimberly George reviewed the organization’s major accomplishments during the past two years.  She spoke about programmatic achievements in GBHC’s funded projects on cardiovascular disease, childhood obesity, maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDS prevention.  Ms. George also highlighted the considerable recent gains GSBHC has made as a coalition, including welcoming several new member organizations, expanding the Board of Directors, formalizing its member benefits, and partnering on numerous community initiatives. (See GBHC Achievements and Goals for a detailed description.)

Membership Expectations
Vicki Ellner, Board Member, GBHC and Director of Outreach, VIP Health Services

Vicki Ellner stressed the importance of membership in GBHC.  It is only through the collaboration of diverse groups and stakeholders that Brooklyn’s healthcare system can be improved.  GBHC provides opportunities to network, form provider-community collaborations, and access resources. Ms. Ellner encouraged participants to view membership as an investment, to renew their commitment, and to prompt other groups to join.

GSBHC Goals and Priorities for 2008
Maxine Cooper, Board Member, GBHC and Consumer Health Librarian, Brooklyn Public Library

Ms. Cooper facilitated an open discussion to learn about the members’ needs and inform the Board’s decisions about GBHC’s priorities for the coming year. Specific questions posed, followed by answers provided by the participants, included:

• In what ways has the lack of, or decrease in funding affected your organization?  What is most difficult for your organization to achieve, as a result?
• Inability to provide translation of materials about healthcare, leading to reduced healthcare access
• Reduced staffing
• Longer wait lists for home care and meal recipients
• Reduced Family Health Plus outreach because of reduced staffing
• Not possible to expand services as needed
• Inability to provide incentives to draw clients in for services
• Unaffordable rents for space

• How does the lack of funding affect the ways in which you serve your clients?
• Heavy case loads mean that case workers lack the time to conduct comprehensive case assessments and tend to stick to the basics
• Clients are skeptical about the resources available at other organizations, causing them to not follow through with referrals
• Some clients are not being served at all and remain on long wait lists
• No opportunities to build human capacity within organizations, which is particularly needed in the area of cultural competency and knowledge of the community
• Some needs in the community remain entirely unmet, under the radar of organizations

Ms. Cooper introduced a draft framework outlining GBHC’s direction for 2008 (please click here for the Goals Framework). It showed ideas for the roles of the different players (staff, Board, membership, and steering committees); the health areas to be addressed; and the coalition’s goals.  The purpose was to spark a conversation in order for GBHC to have membership input into its program design.  Ultimately, community involvement in program design will ensure that GBHC’s programs are responsive to Brooklyn’s needs and not just funder priorities.  Overall, the framework calls for an expansion of the coalition to include more groups interacting in a cohesive way.  It also suggests an expansion from focusing on geographic and ethnic representation in the coalition to including disease-specific and issues-area expertise as well.  In short, in 2008, GBHC should incorporate newly-formed and small grassroots community groups, groups from northern Brooklyn, and experts in specific health areas.

Copies of the document were handed to the attendees, and Ms. Cooper solicited comments regarding the priorities for GBHC and Brooklyn’s public health landscape as a whole.  Priorities identified include:

• Community needs assessment
• A fundamental question to inform our work is a joint understanding of what exactly we mean by ‘health disparities’.  Which particular health disparities affect our programs?  This question needs to be answered prior to looking for funding.
• We should also consider healthcare disparities, the difference between the healthcare people are currently receiving, which is woefully inadequate, and what we can provide for the community, with the current resources available.
• More generally: what is going on in Brooklyn’s healthcare right now?  Where is healthcare heading?  Is ‘health disparities’ the right language for the most prevalent gaps at the moment?  There is a need to establish a common baseline agreed upon by GBHC members.
• Looking beyond ‘health disparities’ to broader issues impacting communities’ health: disparities in education, housing, employment, life expectancy.
• Along these lines, there was a call for meaningful data collection and sharing among organizations, beyond collecting the basic information to be reported to funders.
• What is a healthy Brooklynite?  One idea raised was to conduct a health literacy campaign to promote a consistent message of which indicators mean that someone is healthy.  Perhaps this could take the shape of a focused ‘Take Care Brooklyn’ campaign, based on the current ‘Take Care New York’ campaign that promotes health passports.
• There is a need to better understand culture as it plays out among our communities.  Brooklyn is becoming more diverse, and it was suggested that cultural competency needs to be more than simply hiring someone who is linguistically competent.  The idea is to move from cultural competency to cultural proficiency by building organizations’ capacities. 
• One step toward this is to have Boards of Directors that are comprised of people who know the communities well.

• Collaboration among members
• It was generally agreed that GBHC members should make an effort for more integrated sharing of resources.  What resources are in the room?  Among the coalition, there are many resources available, such as space, training, service referrals.  There was a call to systematize resource exchange.  One way to do this would be for GBHC staff to compile a monthly list of needs/availabilities and send it out to the membership.  The idea of a wide listserv was also raised, but many participants agreed that this would unnecessarily clog email inboxes.  GBHC staff will look into the best way to share this information.
• For example, some member organizations, such as hospitals, have very valuable material resources such as space, equipment, etc.  Meanwhile, they would benefit from collaborations that could educate their providers on how best to communicate with patients – that is, community knowledge that they could utilize toward efforts to reduce medical errors.  Many such exchanges are probably possible, but not happening as often as they should be at the moment.
• Statistics can be made more readily available from the Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene on the health of New Yorkers, and best health practices.

• Advocacy
• The membership could form an advocacy steering committee.  That way, when issues concerning the membership are on the forefront, there will already be an advocacy team in place to initiate a response.
• Policy and advocacy oriented responses are vital, particularly in response to HIV-related initiatives.

• Particular programming concerns
• How do we advocate for uninsured or underinsured undocumented migrants to receive healthcare?  What about low-income families who do not fall below the poverty line?
• There is a need to pay more attention to domestic violence as a concern among our communities.
• There was a call for members to participate in upcoming radio shows that will highlight health issues in the Caribbean community.
• There is a move toward advocating for a better health education curriculum in NYC schools.
• Similarly, there was a call toward engaging adolescents in this conversation about healthcare and health disparities; it is important to look toward the future as we talk about bridging healthcare gaps.
• There is a need for more effective, hands-on, interactive workshops and health fairs.  In general, outreach should be conducted in a more compelling, effective manner.