Friday, April 4, 2025
4/4/2025
Health Equity Assurance and Response Team - As per the World Health Organization (WHO), health equity is attained by removing any potential disadvantages such as social position or other social determined conditions in order for every individual to achieve their full health potential. The City of Laredo Health Department is committed to their mission of providing culturally competent quality services that promote optimal health, prevent disease, and protects the safety of all to achieve health equity. In order to enhance and expand efforts to achieve health equity, it is important to consider where our community lives, learns, works, plays, and worships to offer adequate public health services that address their social, mental and physical health needs. Understanding the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH) in our community and partnering with key stakeholders to address inequities and needs are keys to progress. The City of Laredo Health Department intends to reinforce existing cross-sector partnerships and expand on disease self-management and prevention services in order to improve chronic disease outcomes, particularly among individuals that are at higher risk to experience health disparities and inequities within our local jurisdiction in Webb County and Laredo, Texas. Laredo Health will prioritize community-clinical linkages such as additional offerings of our prevention, education and disease management programs and social connectedness by identifying and implementing support services that encourage a sense of community and belonging to improve mental and physical health outcomes. As a result, Laredo Health expects to increase collaboration and participation of existing and new partners within the Laredo Health Coalition, to include private sector stakeholders, community and economic development partners, local public transportation, food banks and community pantries, in order to obtain adequate feedback on future public health efforts to plan towards health equity. An additional outcome of the proposed project is to increase capacity of our existing disease self-management program that addresses chronic disease such as diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, hypertension and related co-morbidities and offer these services to hard to reach populations within the existing workforce and the elderly in order to achieve health equity. Our goal is to increase community engagement of key partners, and increase enrollment in our prevention programs to improve health outcomes. This will be made possible through the resources and support provided by the CDC Closing the Gap with Social Determinants of Health Accelerator Plans.
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).