The Office of Health Equity Research (OHER) is excited to announce it has awarded funds to address pediatric asthma disparities in New Haven to a coalition of community and academic partners through its Community Health Equity Accelerator initiative. A partner team comprised of the Hispanic Federation Inc. of Connecticut, Center for Children’s Advocacy (CCA), and faculty from the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Sections of General Pediatrics and Pediatric Pulmonology, Allergy, Immunology and Sleep Medicine will receive a pilot award of $150,000 to develop and implement a multilevel community-based intervention. Pediatric clinicians at Fair Haven Community Health Center (FHCHC) and Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital (YNHCH) will refer New Haven families with children ages 4-11 with asthma to trained community health workers, Promotoras, to address ongoing care needs. Hispanic Federation will train the community health workers to provide culturally relevant, bilingual follow-up assistance, including weekly follow-up texts and visits. Community health workers will also identify housing issues that can worsen asthma control and legal services needs, among pilot participants, with support from the Center for Children’s Advocacy.
The Community Health Equity Accelerator (CHEA) initiative was launched in 2022 to unite leaders across multiple domains to tackle health equity issues in New Haven and beyond. This initiative brings together diverse experts from community organizations, Yale-affiliated faculty and staff, and health system and hospital leadership to work together and address health issues that have a significant impact on New Haven communities. CHEA was developed to champion community responsive programs and scholarship that directly address the health needs of our city, with an emphasis on health inequity.
Supported by a Yale School of Medicine institutional investment, the initiative will launch three project cycles to identify, evaluate, and implement strategic and scalable health equity interventions on an accelerated timeline—a flourish or fail fast model. Each cycle will focus on a different community-identified health priority and will simultaneously address the health priority at individual, family or community, and health system levels. A Guiding Coalition of community leaders was established to serve as the governing body throughout all three cycles with scientific and technical support from OHER.
After receiving strong pilot proposals from community and academic applicants, the Guiding Coalition members proposed they work collectively to implement a co-designed intervention. Virginia Spell, executive director of the Urban League of Connecticut and co-chair of the CHEA Guiding Coalition said, “After a thorough application review process, it became clear that the best way to address pediatric asthma in New Haven was by bringing together the applicant teams. Each team brings a different set of expertise. Collectively, we believe they will design and implement an effective multilevel intervention that improves the wellbeing of children living with asthma in New Haven.”
Uniting academic and community leaders provides a unique opportunity for partnership to address health disparities in pediatric asthma in New Haven. President and CEO of the Community Action Agency of New Haven and co-chair of the CHEA Guiding Coalition, Amos Smith says, “The first cycle of CHEA will demonstrate the real strength of community-academic partnerships. Universities and their affiliated institutions, alone, cannot fully address identified needs without forging partnerships with community-based organizations such as Hispanic Federation of Connecticut. Together these partnerships are likely to make a greater impact than each would be able to individually.”
The 12-month pediatric asthma disparities project will launch in January. The Guiding Coalition is now in discussion to select a cycle two topic area.