by Allan Formicola (Author), Lourdes Hernandez -cordero (Author)
From 1999 to 2009, The Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative put Columbia University and its Medical Center in touch with surrounding community organizations and churches to facilitate access to primary care, nutritional improvement, and smoking cessation, and to broker innovative ways to access healthcare and other social services. This unlikely partnership and the relationships it forged reaffirms the wisdom of joining town and gown to improve a community's well-being. Staff members of participating organizations have coauthored this volume, which shares the successes, failures, and obstacles of implementing a vast community health program. A representative of Alianza Dominicana, for example, one of the country's largest groups settling new immigrants, speaks to the value of community-based organizations in ridding a neighborhood of crime, facilitating access to health insurance, and navigating the healthcare system. The editors outline the beginnings and infrastructure of the collaboration and the relationship between leaders that fueled positive outcomes. Their portrait demonstrates how grassroots solutions can create productive dialogues that help resolve difficult issues.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 21 Mar 2011
ISBN 10: 0231151675
ISBN 13: 9780231151672
Book Overview: As we move to reform our health system, lessons from the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Program will be invaluable-lessons in collaboration, partnership, mutual respect, and learning. -- David Satcher, former U.S. Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary of Health The story of the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative contains lessons for health practitioners, public policy experts, and all who care about the health of underserved communities. The ambitions of the project were huge, and not everything worked as planned or was sustained after initial funding expired. Yet the vision of Community Voices, with all its preventive and treatment components, represents the best of American health care. The lessons shared should be of value to all who wish to improve the health of the public. -- Steven A. Schroeder, University of California, San Francisco, and former president, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation