Community Health Disparity Prevention Program

Background: The NJDOH-OMMH community-based partnerships provide pathways to programs and information that impact and advance prevention and control of chronic health conditions disproportionately prevalent among predominately racial/ethnic minority communities.

Program background: The OMMH 2015 grants are awarded to 25 community/faith based organizations to provide evidence based or promising practice, disease prevention and, or wellness and health promotion initiatives. OMMH promotes and supports the implementation of nationally recognized evidence based programs such as; The Barbershop Initiative for Prostate Cancer Prevention, Stanford University Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP), Diabetes Self-Management Program (DSMP), Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More, and the American Heart Association Million Hearts Initiative.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Using a standardized measure collection and evaluation process to gauge performance measure improvements; our customized tool is a requirement for all grantees. Each grantee must submit performance measures and outcomes each year of the grant cycle to include: a) a base line for 100% of the population and achieve 15% or greater improvement for 80% of the population within the first year and a 20% or greater improvement for 85% of the population in the second year, and a 25% or greater outcome improvement rate for at least 90% of the total population in the final year. Health communication and marketing strategies are also a requirement of the grant. Grantees use various methods to promote the program and to outreach hard to reach and vulnerable populations. What are the specific marketing strategies employed? Grantee websites, community based seminars, advertisement through community and language specific media outlets (Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi), flyers, brochures, e-newsletters, radio and Facebook pages are used. Grantees successfully reached and provided health promotion/prevention programs to 25,530 individuals in 2015 using the identified health communication strategies.

Conclusions:  Meaningful and useable health communication and marketing strategies can be effectively delivered by community and faith based organizations engaged in the delivery of evidence based initiatives for the hard to reach and vulnerable populations in New Jersey.

Implications for research and/or practice:  The use of evidence-based nationally recognized social marketing strategies allows effortless replication, cost control, standardized evaluation methods and comparable results.