Monday, November 25, 2024
11/25/2024
The proposed service area is Fulton County, Georgia. The initial program focus will be on the broad racial and ethnic populations of Black or African American and Hispanic, Latino, or Latinx where there has been a disproportionate COVID-19 impact. The program will implement evidenced-based, culturally-tailored health literacy strategies to enhance the rates of COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, mitigation measures, and vaccine confidence and the cross-cutting urgency of behavioral health literacy and access to related services among racial and ethnic minority populations and other socially vulnerable populations. The program will partner with Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), a minority serving institution, for quality improvement activities and program evaluation. The program will increase awareness about COVID-19 mitigation efforts and behavioral health services; increase COVID-19 testing, vaccine confidence, and vaccine uptake; and decrease stigma related to behavioral health, increase behavioral health literacy, and increase usage of behavioral health services in Fulton County. The Health Literacy program will address personal and organizational health literacy through culturally appropriate strategies that include: ?Formation of a Community Coalition Board (CCB) led by a non-governmental, community-based organization. The CCB will meet regularly to discuss the data related to minority communities, issues impacting vulnerable communities, their needs, and how to best connect individuals with services. ?Implementation of a primary and behavioral health integration strategy to address the current needs resulting from COVID-19 as well as pre-existing and future needs in minority and socially vulnerable populations. ?Deployment of a mobile unit in minority and underserved neighborhoods connect and build rapport with residents; mitigate distrust issues surrounding the medical community; address stigma related to behavioral health; provide e ducation, information, linkages to services; empower individuals to recognize signs and symptoms of physical and emotional health needs; provide information and linkages related to COVID-19. The mobile unit will serve to promote sustained engagement with minority and socially vulnerable neighborhoods and individuals. ?Creation of a team of six Outreach Workers who will become experts on the underserved and minority populations in their district and receive culturally specific training. Translation services will be provided. Acknowledging that people of a community know their neighborhood best, there will be targeted efforts to recruit community members for staff roles. ?Recruit Resident Workers who speak the languages of the communities served to canvas hard to reach neighborhoods through door-to-door engagement to provide education and information related to COVID-19. ?Use of an Organizational Health Literacy Initiative for primary and behavioral health providers that includes train-the-trainer, evidenced-based teach backs, toolkits/discussion guides, and plain language materials in order to align with the Healthy People 2030 objectives related to provider/patient communication. ?Implementation of a dynamic online culturally responsive HUB as a resource for utilizing the evidence-based model of community care coordination that focuses on addressing social determinants of health. The site will be user-friendly, written in plain language, provide translation services for individuals with limited English proficiency, and be simple to navigate. Outreach Workers can provide in-the-field access to those with limited technology resources. ?Hosting community events with topics related to COVID-19 and behavioral health. ?Conducting a culturally and linguistically sensitive visibility and outreach campaign.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
