256614 Building Community Health Capacity: Tulane Prevention Research Center (PRC) Neighborhood Ambassador Program

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Carolyn C. Johnson, PhD , Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Catherine Haywood, BSW , Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Frieda Brown , Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
The mission of the Tulane PRC is to address physical/social environmental factors that influence obesity, accomplishing this through research, advocacy, community outreach, and training. Since Hurricane Katrina, neighborhood and community groups across the city have been involved in planning and rebuilding the city's neighborhoods. These groups require support, access to resources, and help for improving their areas for health and safety. The Neighborhood Ambassador Program (NAP), was created to work with neighborhood and community organizations by 1) building trusting relationships, 2) providing access to needed resources, 3)connecting groups to programs that address crime, safety of streets and sidewalks, and 4) providing guidance for neighborhood-based healthy eating and physical activity programs. A secondary purpose is to recruit neighborhood stakeholders to represent their areas on a Community Advisory Panel that can provide input to the PRC relative to research and future sustained community health efforts. To date, 19 organizations have been contacted, and active and ongoing working relationships with six of these organizations have been established. Examples of activities are: partnering with AARP to establish walking groups, contributing to citrus gardens on playgrounds, guidance for grant writing, attending monthly organization meetings, offering health-related literature and brochures, planning health fairs, and recruiting mobile health clinics for areas no longer with a clinic. The NAP has been extremely successful in a very short period of time and will continue to develop new, and sustain established, relationships for the purpose of enhancing health and well being at the grassroots level in New Orleans neighborhoods.

Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Other professions or practice related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1. Demonstrate developing community contacts and relationship building 2. Defining flexible alternatives to neighborhood health goals 3. Designing programs that fit with neighborhood needs and priorities

Keywords: Community Capacity, Community Health Planning

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: N.A.

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a PhD researcher and Director of the Tulane Prevention Research Center who developed the Neighborhood Ambassador Program. I have been involved in numerous funded community-based health education and health promotion programs and have published almost 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Besides Director of the PRC, I am the Vice-Chair of my department and Director of the MCH Leadership Training Program.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.