The Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition (GBHC) is proud to share some important projects with you.

Brooklyn Health Smarts
GBHC is working with the United Way of NYC and the Adult Literacy Media Alliance to build the capacity of community-based organizations to provide health literacy education for their patrons.

GBHC Builds the Capacity of CBOs to Improve Health Literacy:
The demographics of central Brooklyn include some of the major indicators for low health literacy (e.g., in 2000, 55% of Flatbush’s 106,154 residents were foreign-born, 40% spoke a language other than English at home, and 26% were below the poverty level.)  Brooklyn Health Smarts places health literacy education among the scope of services that Brooklyn CBOs provide for these people.

Up to 63 percent of adults in New York City may be affected by low health literacy – the inability to read, understand, and act on basic health information. In Brooklyn’s most impoverished neighborhoods, the number of low-health-literate adults may be even higher.  Low health literacy is the result of many factors.  Poor reading, writing, and math skills are part of the problem.  Text-heavy drug labels and instruction sheets, with such vocabulary as contraindicated, active ingredient, expiration date, or lactose intolerant, are impenetrable to low-level readers.  Labels and instructions are therefore commonly ignored, often resulting in dangerous side effects.  Inadequate math skills hamper adults who need to devise schedules for multiple medications and to measure accurate dosages for themselves or their children.  An inability to take notes prevents many patients from jotting down a doctor’s verbal instructions or keeping a record of a chronic illness, such as adverse reactions to drugs, to relay accurate information to healthcare providers at monthly check-ups.

Brooklyn Health Smarts is designed to help Brooklyn residents at greatest risk for poor health outcomes, who often lack access to medical professionals and do not understand much of the health information they come across in their daily lives.  For example, a low-income person living with HIV/AIDS who does not have a primary care physician needs to know what to look for when taking multiple medications.  (Central Brooklyn has some of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in New York City according to the NYC DOH-MH.)  Likewise, a young immigrant mother needs to know how to read nutritional labels when cooking with American packaged foods for the first time and a pregnant teen needs to know how to check if a multivitamin contains enough folic acid to keep her baby healthy. 

Brooklyn Health Smarts adapts a health literacy curriculum developed by the Adult Literacy Media Alliance for CBO settings and delivers it to at-risk populations receiving social services in Brooklyn.   The long-term goal of Brooklyn Health Smarts is to build health literacy training into the service delivery model of community-based organizations (CBOs) in Brooklyn.  The outcome will be that case managers and social service providers will routinely help clients improve their health literacy as part of their jobs.
Go back

 Cardiovascular Disease - Special Resources
Click here for briefings from our CVD community forums - 2007 and 2008.
Click here to view one of our CVD success stories.
Click here for a Journal of Community Health article on our CVD program.

Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention

GBHC trains community health workers to be advocates for health promotion in cardiovascular disease.

GBHC Provides Strategies for Reducing CVD:
Heart disease and stroke, the most common cardiovascular diseases, are the first and third leading causes of death for both men and women in the U.S., accounting for nearly 40% of all deaths annually. More than 910,000 Americans die of cardiovascular diseases each year, amounting to 1 death every 35 seconds.

These largely preventable conditions are more common among people aged 65 or older, but the number of sudden deaths from heart disease among people aged 15–34 has increased. In addition, more than 70 million Americans live with a cardiovascular disease. Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of premature, permanent disability in the U.S. and more than 6 million hospitalizations each year.

The economic impact of cardiovascular diseases on our nation’s health care system continues to grow as the population ages. The cost of heart disease and stroke in the U.S. is projected to be $403 billion in 2006, including health care expenditures and lost productivity from death and disability.

A key strategy for addressing the risk factors for heart disease and stroke is to educate the public and healthcare practitioners about the importance of prevention.  The Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition organizes training events to provide skills based education on the prevention, detection, and management of cardiovascular diseases.  The objective is to train community health workers and front-line service providers (including case managers, social workers, and home health aides) in the risk factors and signs and symptoms for heart disease and stroke, the importance of calling 911, and strategies for reducing disparities in CVD including chronic disease self-management initiatives and patient education.

Over the past five years, we conducted a series of forums that progressed from raising awareness of CVD prevalence in Brooklyn to focusing on disparities in CVD and, finally, providing community solutions.  Specific foci have included the importance of cultural competency, the impact of health literacy, and CVD among at-risk populations, including African-American, Latino, South Asian, and immigrant groups. 

GBHC’s trainings include a dialogue on what the training objectives mean for the particular audience.  The experience of a nurse in the Stroke Unit, for example, is very different from that of a home visiting nurse.  Participants share their experiences and the challenges they face when addressing heart disease and stoke in their work.  They also discuss their role as providers in preventing heart disease and stroke in their communities.  Ultimately, the result is the generation and sharing of ideas about improving patient education and compliance, engaging the community, and reducing disparities.
Go back

Walk Our Children

To promote better health through physical activity, GBHC helps school communities organize efforts to identify and address local safety concerns preventing children from walking and playing outside.

Click here to view our Walk Our Children success stories - 2007 and 2008.

GBHC Community Collaboration to Improve Street Safety:
Fewer children in the U.S. are walking or riding bicycles to school on a regular basis, while childhood obesity and other health problems such as type 2 diabetes and asthma among children are at an all-time high and sharply rising.  In 2003, 24% of New York City schoolchildren were known to be obese.  Participating in adequate physical activity can help children reduce the risk of becoming overweight or obese. Walking to school and playing outside are great ways for children to be physically active.  While the majority of Brooklyn’s children walk to school, the walk is often dangerous due to traffic, crime, and bullying.  Parents’ concern about the safety of their children on the streets often keeps children from playing outside. 

To combat these barriers to physical activity, GBHC’s Walk Our Children program uses community-organizing to establish safe routes to school.  As part of the national Safe Routes to School movement, GBHC helps communities build partnerships between the school, PTA, local police department, department of public works, department of transportation, civic associations, local politicians, and businesses to create an environment that is supportive of walking and bicycling to school safely.

As part of this effort, GBHC organizes educational walks with groups of elementary school children that include activities and discussions about traffic safety.  We have partnered with Brooklyn Safety City, a NYC Department of Transportation program that educates children about crosswalks, traffic signs, and general awareness of their environment as they walk or ride bicycles on their way to and from school.

GBHC also holds meetings with school administrators and parent associations to discuss the barriers in the schools’ neighborhoods that stand in the way of kids’ safety and parents’ confidence in walking to school.  These meetings include conversations about finding the safest routes to school and working with the local community – police, businesses, and residents – to create safe routes in places where they do not exist.  GBHC has developed a number of strategies for combating different types of safety concerns, which we help the school communities implement.

For example, as the result of our work in just one school community, a bike lane was added near the school; more police traffic patrols were observed, especially ticketing drivers rolling through stop signs; parents became actively involved in working toward safety measures, particularly calling 311 about the need for speed bumps; and pedestrian safety was incorporated into the school’s Wellness Council activities.
Go back

Maternal and Child Health
The Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition conducts outreach and organizes workshops to improve maternal and child health and reduce Brooklyn's high infant mortality rate.

GBHC Health Promotion Through Outreach and Education:
Maternal and child health is a serious concern in many Brooklyn neighborhoods today, as evidenced by high infant mortality rates (IMR). In 2004, Brooklyn’s overall IMR was 6.6 compared to 5.9 in the rest of NYC. One-third of infants who die in NYC are born in Brooklyn. The same conditions that lead to infant death also lead to chronic health problems and developmental delays among children who survive particularly lung and neurological problems and learning disabilities. Work to prevent infant death also helps improve the health of many children, of childbearing families and the wellbeing of all of society. In fact, infant mortality rate is widely recognized as an indicator of overall health within a sub-population.

In order to improve maternal and child health among Brooklyn’s residents, the Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition conducts outreach and health education on a variety of maternal and child health issues, including: • Family Planning, • Breastfeeding, • SIDS Prevention, • Smoking cessation, • Substance Abuse, • Domestic Violence, • Cancer Screenings, • HIV/STDs, • Immunizations, • Mental Health, • Nutrition/Exercise, • Home environmental concerns (lead/mercury poisonings and/or baby safety), • Hypertension, • Obesity, • Gestational Diabetes, • Healthcare Access, • Health Insurance, • Teen Pregnancy Prevention, and • Financial Literacy

GBHC’s outreach is targeted to reach the communities most in need, including those with the highest IMRs and neighborhoods located in Brooklyn’s “lead belt.” GBHC also participates in community assessments and health planning.
Go back

H.I.T.E.
Health Information Tool for Empowerment
www.hitesite.org

GBHC Helps Improve Access to Services:
Beginning in 2004, GBHC partnered with the Greater New York Hospital Foundation to create the Health Information Tool for Empowerment, more commonly referred to as H.I.T.E.

H.I.T.E. is New York’s online directory of low-cost health and social services. It is designed to help anyone who provides frontline assistance to low-income, uninsured, and under-insured clients. This includes individuals who work in organizations such as social service agencies, clinics, faith-based groups, homeless shelters, and public sector health and welfare agencies. Please visit the H.I.T.E. website at www.hitesite.org to learn how H.I.T.E. may help you.
Go back

Lead Poisoning Prevention
The Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition has joined with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Lead Poisoning Prevention Program to “put the lid on lead” in Brooklyn.

http://www.gsbhc.org/Lead-Tent-Eng.pdf

Did you know that childhood lead poisoning is still a serious problem in New York City? In fact, in 2004, over 3,000 children were newly identified as having elevated blood lead levels, and children of color living in low-income neighborhoods are disproportionately affected. More than half of these children resided in just 12 of NYC’s 42 neighborhoods.

Five of these neighborhoods are in Brooklyn: Bedford Stuyvesant-Crown Heights, East Flatbush-Flatbush, Williamsburg-Bushwick, East New York and Borough Park. Overall, 41% of newly identified children with blood lead levels requiring environmental intervention during 2004 lived in Brooklyn.

We ask that you join us and the New York City Department of Health to “put the lid on lead”. Please use the poster at the above link to spread the word about Lead Poisoning Prevention. A Spanish language poster can be found at
http://www.gsbhc.org/Lead-Tent-Span.pdf.

We would like to thank you in advance for your participation in our efforts to reach the national goal of eliminating childhood lead poisoning by 2010 and working to make Brooklyn a healthier place! For more information about the services provided by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Lead Poisoning Prevention Program or what you can do to help prevent lead poisoning, call 311.
Go back

Stay Tuned for more Projects!

If you have questions or would like more information on the Greater Brooklyn Health Coalition, please contact us at 718-940-3453.