Tackling Health Inequities Using a Coalition-based Community Intervention: Lesson from the BPN Experience ( as part of the proposed panel REACHing for Social Justice: Highlights of REACH Programs Working to Advance Health Equity )

This abstract is proposed as a group panel under ID 228030. Funded by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health across the US (CDC REACH U.S.), a national, multi-level program designed to help the CDC to achieve the goals of Healthy People 2010, the Brownsville Action Committee for Health Equality Project (BACHE) is a coalition-based, community intervention that aims to reduce disproportionately high infant mortality rates among Black and Puerto Rican women living in the Brownsville/Ocean Hill area of Brooklyn, New York. Modeled after a “promising practice” developed by a large insurer in Rochester, NY, BACHE contains two key programmatic components: 1) an enhanced prenatal care component that assesses pregnant women's risk and 2) a community based system that coordinates care and referrals between local medical and social service providers. Using a community-based participatory approach (CBPA) and with an emphasis on sustainability, BACHE seeks to increase timely enrollment in prenatal care, improve the quality of screening to identify social risks early, and provide well-coordinated supportive services, thereby reducing medical and psychosocial risks and, with it, decreasing VLBW, pre-term births, and neonatal mortality. This paper/panel discussion will focus on presenting findings from Year 3 of the project. We will present this year's evaluation results, including results of our pilot and how we have used other qualitative and quantitative process data, including data on CBPA and sustainability, to assess and improve the project.