Things like safe housing, enough money for basic needs, good schools, healthy food, and being treated fairly all affect a person’s health.
Our Health Equity and Community Health Action teams work with patients, families, and community partners to remove barriers to health. Together, we help improve health not only inside our clinics but also throughout the Washington, DC region.
The Health Equity Department helps people overcome challenges that can make it harder to stay healthy. These challenges may include finding housing, paying for food or medicine or getting transportation to medical appointments.
Our team works with patients one-on-one, builds partnerships with community organizations and educates and speaks up for policies that make it easier for everyone to get the care and support they need.
We help patients who are facing social or economic challenges that affect their health. Our Patient Resource Specialists work closely with the care team to connect patients with services such as food, housing, transportation, medication assistance, and other community resources. We use tools like The PRAPARE screening is a tool used to identify patients who may have health-related social or legal needs that could affect their health and well-being. The screening helps care teams identify potential barriers and connect patients with appropriate resources, services, or legal support. to better understand each patient’s needs and create a plan to help.
We work with community organizations to connect patients with the services they need beyond the clinic. These partnerships help patients find support more easily and make sure resources match the needs of our community. Please visit our Salud Es page to explore resources for your needs.
We work to improve health by supporting better policies and programs. We share information with policymakers, participate in community discussions, and work with partner organizations to promote fair access to health care and other important services.
We listen to patients and collect information about the challenges they face. By looking for patterns, we can better understand the biggest barriers in our community. This helps us improve our services, strengthen partnerships, and advocate for changes that support healthier communities.
Our Community Health Action (CHA) department identifies, educates, and engages members of the community through health promotion and wellness activities, women’s reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention, LGBTQ empowerment, HIV/AIDS testing, counseling and referral, and chronic disease management.
