November News - Connecting Our Work to Our Community

Can you believe that 2019 is almost over? As we gather together with our families and friends during this holiday, we want to express our gratitude for allowing us to serve the Grand Rapids community as advocates for health equity. We've been busy this year and our team is eager to share their work. Read below for updates on our programs and mission. Wishing you a happy holiday!

"CARE" is not only a core part of the term "healthcare," it also represents the foundation upon which we anchor our mission and programming. Donate Now

Never underestimate the power that one small act can create on a system. Each action that supports equity, healing and reconciliation has a ripple effect that can transform a community. This giving season, you can be the change you want to see in the world. And you can do that by:  Supporting a woman who wants to learn how to eat healthier, lose weight and feed her family nutritious meals. Sponsor a man who is diabetic to help him manage his disease in order to live a longer, healthier life. Add your voice to the chorus of black voices that is fighting to make a change at the municipal, governmental or institutional level. Speak up and educate others in our community about health disparities that exist right here at home. Shop on Amazon Smile and earmark GRAAHI as your charity of choice. Amazon donates .5% of your spend to us, and those pennies add up! Sign up to volunteer or attend our events!

Updates from our Team

Community | Strong Fathers Having served more than 100 men and their families, Strong Fathers continues to grow and evolve. Our new program coordinator, Deavondre Jones, has spent the last 6 months learning, assessing and directing the program all in one. Since his recent return from Washington D.C. for the National Healthy Start Annual Conference, the program has adopted a new model with evidence based practices. Strong Fathers will rolling out a new program framework to the community with the intention to connect with and support more men to become better fathers. Stay tuned! Community | Diabetes Network The 2019 DEN program kicked off with hands-on diabetes class for men. Not only are we sharing important disease management and mitigation information, we are providing each participant with a gym membership to encourage a holistic healthy lifestyle. More than 200 men have participated in our DEN programming so far. With more class offerings coming in 2020.

Community | Rhythm Run This year marked the 11th year of GRAAHI’s Rhythm Run 5k and with that we’ve reached a milestone of having more than 20,000 people run, walk and celebrate health with us!! Once again community turned out in droves to participate in walking, running and learning at our health marketplace. Magic 104.5 kept us in tune with our theme of “Lift Your Feet and Run to the Beat.” More than XXX people participated in the run, while hundreds of community members came to enjoy the festivities.   Look for more program offerings in the first quarter of 2020, when we launch “Real Women, Real Change,” a Couch to 5K, more Diabetes classes and expand our community outreach. Advocacy | Priorities Survey Black community members who participated in our advocacy priorities survey identified the following priorities areas for GRAAHI's advocacy efforts: 1) improving access to high-quality education, 2) increasing access to affordable housing, and 3) improving access to and quality of health care and mental health care. We are engaging in a participatory policy-making process with community members in order to create policy calls to action related to education, health care, and mental health care. The process will also include advocacy training to equip community members with tools to advance the policy calls to action. We will also work to address housing affordability through partnering with other community organizations.

Research | Staggering Stats Health disparities are most evident when we look at the numbers. In Kent County, black children are still more likely to live in poverty and are twice as likely to die from infant mortality as white children. We’ll be sharing more of these data sets over the coming months so that you can understand and help advocate for health equity alongside us. Education | Pathways Program The Pathways to Healthcare Careers initiative represents a community-wide commitment to health equity and healthcare workforce diversity. The collaborative, consisting of K-12 partners, institutions of higher education, and healthcare employers has been working to identify barriers and facilitators to healthcare careers for African American and Latinx community members. We are excited to unite around this common goal and work together to reduce health disparities and workforce barriers.

It takes a community coming together to make change. Support our mission with a donation, volunteering or giving us feedback. We'd love to have you join us on this journey! Click on the link to learn more.

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