Creating a Healthier Community

Fostering healthy communities means ensuring access to medical services, yet it encompasses much more.

Although a person can do little about their genetic predisposition to chronic disease, more than fifty percent of a person's risk is related to lifestyle-and that is something that can change for the better.

But how can health care providers support healthy eating when local stores do not sell fresh fruits and vegetables? How can they encourage exercise when local streets are not safe? How can they aid immigrant families faced with depression when there are too few bicultural mental health professionals? How can they help patients find meaning in their lives after devastating illness? Beth Israel Deaconess is addressing these social determinants of health through a variety of outreach programs.

Healthy Food Equity Project

Obesity has reached epidemic levels and disproportionately affects low-income African-American, Caribbean Islanders and Latino communities. The Boston Public Health Commission found that about 64 percent of adults living in Dorchester are overweight or obese, increasing the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heath disease, stroke, asthma, arthritis and certain cancers.

Bowdoin Street Health Center's assessment of healthy, affordable food options revealed no full-service supermarkets in the neighborhood but rather small corner stores not equipped to store and sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Bowdoin's Healthy Food Equity plan articulates three primary strategies to provide access to healthier food choices:

Sustaining a weekly Farmer's Market during the spring-autumn months
Food Prescription program, which provides patients with vouchers to purchase fresh and affordable produce in convenient locations (after an initial nutrition consult)
Implementing a community education campaign

Key to the Healthy Food Equity Project are the Healthy Champions — a cadre of teens who participated in health cooking classes and nutrition education workshops, learned about Bowdoin Street Health Center’s on-site Farmers Market, and shopped at the on-site Fresh Truck, a converted school bus that provides access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

A Response to Community Violence

Community violence-roughly defined as assaults and homicides where victims and perpetrators are not related-began to rise in Boston in 2004. The Dorchester neighborhood surrounding Bowdoin Street Health Center has been one of the city's "hotspots" for community violence.

With St Peter's Teen Center, Bowdoin Street is leading the Violence Intervention and Prevention (VIP) program of the Boston Public Health Commission. Particular focus areas of VIP include: strengthening resident and community engagement, increasing access to leadership opportunities for youth, coordinating community actions in the event of homicides and gun violence, and ensuring that Bowdoin/Geneva neighborhood residents have access to quality services, outreach, and support. The VIP outreach program is specifically focused on middle-school aged youth (of which there are 600 in the Bowdoin/Geneva neighborhood) to ensure that they have access to after-school and summer programs as well as health services.

Healing the Community

Community members struggle to find healing, hope and a sense of safety. Bowdoin Street Health Center responds in a variety of ways. Mental health clinicians reach out to counsel patients directly affected, and staff are now screening all patients for the effects of violence. With other local organizations and resident groups, Bowdoin sponsors Nights of Healing, bringing together hundreds of youth and their families to bring solace and affirmation of community spirit in vanquishing the random violence that too frequently occurs.

BIDMC's Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery joins this effort by offering targeted programs for advocates and supervisors who work with victims of crime and violence to prevent or deal with Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) — a syndrome that affects those exposed to secondary violence.

Faith-Based Cancer Disparities Network

Recognizing that people of color bear an unequal burden of cancer, in 2006, BIDMC helped found a new alliance, The Faith-Based Cancer Disparities Network (the Network). A collaborative effort with the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and The Black Ministerial Alliance, BIDMC now partners with ten churches to support the churches' educational outreach campaigns and bring new programming into the community.

The Network continues to meet on a regular basis to identify and address health-related concerns pertinent to their congregations. Experts from a variety of community-based organizations partnered with Network churches to offer a variety of awareness programs related to cardiovascular disease, breast health, healthy eating, genetic testing and stress management. Educating communities in key risk and prevention factors associated with cancer has also led to enhanced awareness of other chronic diseases.

BIDMC also supports the annual award-winning Faces of Faith Exhibition, which provides cancer survivors within the faith community an opportunity to break through the silence. Through self-portraits and testimonies, 60 cancer survivors have told their stories of hope and resilience, showing that life with and beyond cancer can be glorious and fulfilling.