Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
We identified 22 target zip codes, clustered in the county?s western, southern, and eastern areas. The 22 target zip codes include one-third of the county?s inhabitants but at the beginning of April accounted for 52% of deaths in the county, 43% of positive cases, and 40% of active cases. These zip codes are in the top 4th of the CDC?s Social Vulnerability Index, experiencing disparities in socioeconomic status, language, transportation, household composition/disability, access to consistent broadband internet, and are in the lowest quartile for health literacy. We propose an innovative multi-level health literacy plan to extend and diversify the existing work of our local COVID-19 Community Response and Equity Coalition (CREC). Since 2020, the CREC has addressed our community?s COVID-19 needs, prioritizing groups disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Current CREC membership includes over 150 members representing more than 50 organizations across healthcare, academia and community-based organizations in Bexar County. We will seek CREC input as our Advisory Committee and invite CREC members to participate in health literacy activities. We will develop the health literacy plan using a community-informed formative evaluation that includes bilingual community focus groups and stakeholder interviews with CREC partners, community-based organizations and other Bexar County leaders to identify specific health literacy needs. We will provide health literacy and health communication trainings for an interprofessional audience of health providers using virtual and in-person modalities. We will also create a pipeline of future healthcare professionals equipped with health literacy skills by scaling up our nationally recognized Community Service Learning (CSL) mini-midi grant program. Our health literacy pledge program aims to increase social norms and expectations related to health literacy. We will engage community members and local and natural lea ders to develop a variety of informational messages and methods, including digital stories and peer to peer learning that meet each community?s health literacy levels and needs. We propose to disseminate COVID-19 related information more broadly through community-based organizations and culturally and linguistically appropriate programs that community members already access for services. We will train CHWs and public health students trained in contact tracing to serve as navigators to increase access to COVID-19 services like testing and vaccinations and demystify the contract tracing process. The participatory evaluation will use a culturally responsive and equitable evaluation approach with data collected from multiple sources (e.g., community members, healthcare professionals). We will increase participant responses by using a variety of bilingual data collection methods (e.g. online, mail, interviews) and assess if we reached the target population by surveying residents in the target zip codes about their awareness and engagement in health literacy activities. We will use a continuous quality improvement approach to analyze, assess and monitor key process and outcome measures. Evaluators will meet with the project team monthly to provide updates related to implementation processes and ensure National CLAS standards are met.
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).