Department of Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, United States.
Department of Medicine, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jun 20;11:1134044. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1134044. eCollection 2023.
Hispanics in Lebanon and Reading, Pennsylvania, experience high levels of socioeconomic and health disparities in risk factors for chronic disease. In 2018, our community-academic coalition "Better Together" received a Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) award to improve healthy lifestyles. This report describes our work-in-progress and lessons learned to date from our REACH-supported initiatives in Lebanon and Reading.
For the past 4 years, our coalition has leveraged strong community collaborations to implement and evaluate culturally-tailored practice- and evidence-based activities aimed at increasing physical activity, healthy nutrition, and community-clinical linkages. This community case report summarizes the context where our overall program was implemented, including the priority population, target geographical area, socioeconomic and health disparities data, community-academic coalition, conceptual model, and details the progress of the Better Together initiative in the two communities impacted.
To improve physical activity, we are: (1) creating new and enhancing existing trails connecting everyday destinations through city redesigning and master planning, (2) promoting outdoor physical activity, (3) increasing awareness of community resources for chronic disease prevention, and (4) supporting access to bikes for youth and families. To improve nutrition, we are: (1) expanding access to locally-grown fresh fruit and vegetables in community and clinical settings, through the Farmers Market Nutrition Program to beneficiaries of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program and the Veggie Rx to patients who are at risk for or have diabetes, and (2) providing bilingual breastfeeding education. To enhance community-clinical linkages, we are training bilingual community health workers to connect at-risk individuals with diabetes prevention programs.
Intervening in areas facing high chronic disease health disparities leads us to develop a community-collaborative blueprint that can be replicated across Hispanic communities in Pennsylvania and the United States.
在黎巴嫩和宾夕法尼亚州雷丁，西班牙裔人群在慢性病风险因素方面面临着严重的社会经济和健康差距。2018 年，我们的社区学术联盟“携手共进”（Better Together）获得了种族和民族社区卫生方法（REACH）奖，以改善健康的生活方式。本报告描述了我们迄今为止在黎巴嫩和雷丁开展的 REACH 支持倡议的工作进展和经验教训。
在过去的 4 年中，我们的联盟利用强大的社区合作，实施和评估了文化适应性的实践和基于证据的活动，旨在增加身体活动、健康营养和社区临床联系。本社区案例报告总结了我们总体计划实施的背景，包括优先人群、目标地理区域、社会经济和健康差距数据、社区学术联盟、概念模型，并详细介绍了“携手共进”倡议在受影响的两个社区的进展。
为了提高身体活动水平，我们正在：（1）通过城市重新设计和总体规划，创建新的和增强现有的连接日常目的地的步道；（2）促进户外身体活动；（3）提高对慢性病预防社区资源的认识；（4）支持为青年和家庭提供自行车。为了改善营养，我们正在：（1）通过农民市场营养计划向妇女、婴儿和儿童（WIC）计划的受益者和蔬菜 Rx 计划向有糖尿病风险或患有糖尿病的患者，扩大社区和临床环境中本地种植的新鲜水果和蔬菜的获取渠道；（2）提供双语母乳喂养教育。为了加强社区临床联系，我们正在培训双语社区卫生工作者，将有风险的个人与糖尿病预防计划联系起来。
在面临高慢性病健康差距的地区进行干预，使我们能够制定出一个社区合作蓝图，可以在美国宾夕法尼亚州和美国的西班牙裔社区中复制。
