Addressing health disparities among minority populations through program infrastructure and management

Background Minority populations across the US are disproportionately affected by chronic conditions and national prevention strategies such as Healthy People 2020 aim to reduce these disparities. This presents an unprecedented opportunity to implement program infrastructure skills building training to increase communities' ability to assess and respond to public health needs and reduce disparities in health and healthcare. Methods My Brother's Keeper, Inc, has implemented the Program Infrastructure and Management for Community Health Promotion and Education (PIM), a one-day skills building course designed to train organizations on developing, managing and evaluating community health promotion and education programs. The course also provides organizations tools for advocating, designing, implementing and evaluating prevention programs through a systematic planning process to more effectively address the needs of minority populations. Participants learn how to conduct needs assessments, develop SMART objectives, develop evaluation plans and analyze policy. Results Since 2007, MBK has conducted courses within 9 states with a total of 94 participants, representing community- based organizations, academic institutions and governmental agencies across the US. Participants received a certificate of completion at the conclusion of the course. Evaluation results revealed that all participants (84.04% strongly agree and15.95% agree) experienced an increase in their awareness about program assessment and development due to this session and (99.0%) indicated that they would apply PIM information to programs within their respective agencies and organizations. Conclusions Training organizations on effectively developing, implementing and evaluating culturally sensitive programs can have a long term impact on eliminating health and healthcare disparities in minority populations.