Community Engagement: Trust Building

Prior studies have shown that community health works embedded in the neighborhood-based organizations effectively connect and relate to residents, facilitating the care they need, and motivating them to stay on top of their health. Long-term, adopting healthy behaviors and receiving timely, necessary medical care drives improved, more cost-effective community health outcomes.

ACHIEVE Greater at University Hospitals aims to provide education and engagement around health topics include nutrition, health eating, mental wellness and substance abuse to the Cleveland community through events held throughout the community, particularly in Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) residences. The CMHA is  one of the nation’s largest subsidized housing programs, and Better Health Partnerships (BHP), a Cleveland-based non-profit dedicated to reducing health disparities and employer of community health workers.

With community health workers at the forefront, ACHIEVE strives to identify patients with high cardiovascular disease risk early, to mitigate their risks with proactive health and behavioral strategies, referring them to UH for more specialized treatment and prescribing medications when necessary.

CMHA will coordinate health events across housing projects in Cleveland to identify patients, ages 40-75, with disparate health and social determinant of health needs. CMHA residents can undergo blood pressure, glucose, and lipid screenings, and will receive a no-cost, state-of-the art coronary calcium screening to determine their cardiovascular risk and personalized health needs.

BHP a Cleveland based non-profit, will partner with UH to offer a community-health-worker model of care to provide sustainability for this effort beyond the grant funding period of five years. 

ACHIEVE GreatER will pay for community health workers, nurses, and care coordinators to work with CMHA and provide health services, including free risk factor screening. A nurse-dietician-pharmacist will also join the project, provided by University Hospitals Center of Integrated and Novel Approaches for Vascular-Metabolic Disease (CINEMA).