Community Based Services & Initiatives

Services

• Developing multicultural healthcare curricula for medical schools, including Morehouse School of Medicine       
  Creating and participating in community forums regarding pertinent multicultural health issues
• Collaborating with local agencies and healthcare systems with grant support to offer joint, culturally appropriate programs and staff training
• Promoting the MDI World Wide Website for the gathering and disseminating of information
  Establishing a multicultural resource center, meeting the informational needs of community organizations, universities, and the healthcare industries
• Expanding the Mentorship Development Program, including "work shadowing" programs.

        2008 MHI Current Activities

• Continued collaboration with Genesis Health Services on a Pfizer Foundation Grant to hold focus sessions and conduct a Newtown Community based Town Hall meeting June 7, 2008 regarding solutions to health disparities impacting that community.

• Continued participation Project Unity HIV/AIDS outreach

• Continued development Gatekeepers for training in additional disease mode

• Continued consultant to Healthy Start and Sarasota Memorial Hospital with Infant Mortality project

• Continued consultant to The Wellness Community, worked with team to present poster on developing culturally competent support groups at Moffitt Hospital’s conference on cultural diversity in Cancer care in Clearwater, May 2008.

• Continued monitoring/facilitation of Project Challenge mentoring program, recipient of CHIP mini grant to unify and coordinate youth empowerment programs run by various sororities and fraternities. Also coordinating with Sarasota Schools on enlarging pipeline of youth into mental health fields.

• Co-coordination Bayhaven Elementary Earth Box gardening initiative in conjunction with curriculum on nutrition and obesity prevention.

2007 MHI Project summary

MHI was involved in a variety of activities in the SW Florida region throughout 2007. Of worth note was the development of a “Gatekeepers for community health” program in Sarasota and Manatee Counties.  This project was a finalist in the WEDU Innovative community service awards category, recognized for its unique and effective use of lay people to be trained and deployed as HIV/AIDS counselors throughout the community.  In addition, Dr. Merritt was recently recognized at the Cobb Institute Town Hall meeting as recipient of the Genesis Health Services Community Service Award.

          2007 MHI Activities have included:

• Co-founder of the Newtown Community Health Advisory Committee (NHAC)

• Guest speaker on various media-TV, radio regarding multicultural health issues

• Member and co-organizer of the Community Health Action Team (CHAT)

• Consultant HIV/AIDS (HANS) Network, Sarasota

• Participant HANS Project Unity outreach

• Creation and implementation of a community health assessment survey to refine erroneous statistics being used to base important policy decisions regarding the Newtown community. 

• Dr. Merritt in collaboration with Genesis Health Services as their community medical director, developed the highly successful community Gatekeeper’s program which, on a shoestring budget, trained 40 laypeople from Sarasota and Manatee counties as HIV/AIDS outreach workers.  With the input of the community, she helped establish 16 sites across the 2 counties for ongoing HIV/AIDS education and testing activities, logging over 4000 face to face encounters to date.  This cadre of workers will be further developed to assist in addressing the many health disparities affecting the community including high blood pressure, diabetes, infant mortality and cancer.

• Co-facilitation of the Genesis Mentoring program

• Provided bilingual interpreter service in clinical settings

• Served as advisor on the healthy start infant mortality issue along with Dr.Washington Hill, chief of staff, Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

• Co-organizer of the January 2008 Town Hall meeting for the Cobb Institute and Gulf Coast medical societies.

• Consultant for The Wellness Community and facilitator for monthly African American and Latino cancer support groups as well as a speaker at several events in the community.