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The Institute for Family Health Receives CDC Grant to Expand Bronx Health REACH

The Institute for Family Health Receives CDC Grant to Expand Bronx Health REACH

New York, NY (October 5, 2018) – The Institute for Family Health received an award of nearly $4,000,000 to be used over a five-year period to expand the activities of its Bronx Health REACH (BHR) Coalition. Funded since 1999, BHR was initially focused on the South Bronx. This new funding will permit the Institute to expand its activities to the entire Bronx, using evidence-based interventions to improve health among Blacks and Latinos in the Bronx by implementing culturally tailored interventions related to nutrition, physical activity and community-clinical linkages.

“The Institute for Family Health has worked in the Bronx for more than 30 years, and is committed to working with the community to eliminate the racial and ethnic health disparities that still exist there,” said Dr. Neil Calman, president & CEO of the Institute. “We are aware that many of the root causes of disparities cannot be adequately addressed in the exam room, and we are thrilled that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has maintained its investment in our work to permit us to move closer to that goal.”

The award from CDC supports the activities of a Bronx-wide Coalition of over 80 members, including health care providers, community and faith based organizations, social service providers, advocates, and city agencies. The Coalition has successfully implemented community-led, evidence-based interventions in a sustained effort to eliminate health disparities in chronic disease and related risk factors among residents of the Bronx.

Specifically, BHR will work to increase access to healthier foods and beverages; promote breastfeeding by increasing the number of locations that are breastfeeding-friendly; support active design efforts to increase safe, accessible places for physical activity; and improve community-clinical linkages through the use of locally available health and health promotion programs.

BHR will build on some of its most successful efforts to date, including its work in 90 schools in four Bronx school districts, promoting classroom based nutrition education and sponsoring professional development for teachers and teachers’ aides to increase physical activity and Physical Education; the Complete the Grand Concourse Campaign, a complete streets effort impacting the borough’s busiest thoroughfare; establishing farm share programs and farmers’ markets; and collaborating with partners to increase healthier foods in more than 70 local bodegas/corner stores and eateries.