Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
J Urban Health. 2012 Oct;89(5):809-27. doi: 10.1007/s11524-012-9684-8.
Research indicates that insufficient emphasis on community collaboration and partnership can thwart innovative community-driven work on the social determinants of health by local health departments. Appreciating the importance of enhancing community participation, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) helped lead the development of the Health Equity Project (HEP), an intervention aimed at increasing the capacity of urban youth to identify and take action to reduce food-related health disparities. DOHMH partnered with the City University of New York School of Public Health and several local youth organizations to design and implement the intervention. HEP was conducted with 373 young people in 17 cohorts at 14 unique sites: six in Brooklyn, six in the Bronx, and two in Harlem. Partnered youth organizations hosted three stages of work: interactive workshops on neighborhood health disparities, food environments, and health outcomes; food-focused research projects conducted by youth; and small-scale action projects designed to change local food environments. Through these activities, HEP appears to have been successful in introducing youth to the social, economic, and political factors that shape food environments and to the influence of food on health outcomes. The intervention was also somewhat successful in providing youth with community-based participatory research skills and engaging them in documenting and then acting to change their neighborhood food environments. In the short term, we are unable to assess how successful HEP has been in building young leaders who will continue to engage in this kind of activism, but we suspect that more extended interactions would be needed to achieve this more ambitious goal. Experiences at these sites suggest that youth organizations with a demonstrated capacity to engage youth in community service or activism and a commitment to improving food or other health-promoting community resources make the most suitable and successful partners for this kind of effort.
研究表明，如果地方卫生部门不重视社区协作和伙伴关系，就可能会阻碍社区主导的社会决定因素健康工作的创新。纽约市卫生与精神卫生部（DOHMH）认识到增强社区参与的重要性，帮助牵头开展了卫生公平项目（HEP），该项目旨在增强城市青年识别和采取行动减少与食品相关的健康差距的能力。DOHMH 与纽约城市大学公共卫生学院和几个当地青年组织合作设计和实施了这一干预措施。HEP 在 14 个独特地点的 17 个队列中对 373 名年轻人进行了研究：布鲁克林 6 个，布朗克斯 6 个，哈莱姆 2 个。合作的青年组织举办了三个阶段的工作：关于社区健康差距、食品环境和健康结果的互动研讨会；青年进行的以食品为重点的研究项目；旨在改变当地食品环境的小规模行动项目。通过这些活动，HEP 似乎成功地让年轻人了解了塑造食品环境的社会、经济和政治因素，以及食品对健康结果的影响。该干预措施还在一定程度上成功地为年轻人提供了社区参与式研究技能，并让他们参与记录和改变他们社区的食品环境。短期内，我们无法评估 HEP 在培养将继续从事这种激进主义的青年领袖方面的成功程度，但我们怀疑需要更多的互动才能实现这一更高的目标。这些地点的经验表明，具有证明有能力让青年参与社区服务或激进主义活动以及致力于改善食品或其他促进健康的社区资源的青年组织是此类努力最适合和最成功的合作伙伴。
