State Category: Mississippi

Building a Community Roadmap to Health and Equity in Jackson, Mississippi

By Beneta D. Burt, Executive Director, Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity

The Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity, a community-run organization that seeks to generate and mobilize resources, utilizes our expertise to improve how community institutions operate and, at the same time, protect and promote the health of community members.

By working with everyday institutions that touch everyone’s life, we can advocate for changes that are good for the bottom line and promote better health equity in Jackson. By building important relationships, we can ensure community institutions support the community’s efforts to be healthy—and are true partners in making the healthy choice the easy choice.

How we started

With primary support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Mississippi Roadmap’s work began in 2003 with a series of sessions aimed at addressing why African-Americans are sicker and die sooner than their peers.

Through concept mapping, we identified the many factors that contribute to poor health. And, just one year later, nearly 200 community residents, members of the Mississippi Roadmap Community Steering Committee (CSC) and National Advisory Board members created ideas to improve community health outcomes. Participants laid out a “roadmap” for a healthy present and an even healthier future, especially for the economically-disadvantaged citizens of Jackson. While the state of affairs regarding the health of African-Americans was central to the purpose of the conference, the overall goal was to develop a community-driven health movement that fostered equity, justice and respect for all people.

Initially we set out to improve access to fresh and affordable produce and safe and affordable places for people to exercise – there were simply no grocery stores or farmers’ markets in the area and no price-conscious fitness centers.

To solve these problems, we re-purposed a shuttered grocery store to include:

  • A state-of-the-art adult fitness center;
  • An indoor farmers’ market;
  • A children’ fitness area that accommodates pre-school through teens;
  • Space for healthy cooking classes, in partnership with dietitians from The University of Mississippi Medical Center;
  • A venue for senior citizens to congregate;
  • An affordable rental facility for community events and a venue to convene community conversations; and
  • A Technology Learning Lab that serves 4th and 5th grade students who participate in our afterschool program.

Additionally—in an effort to promote healthy eating habits, to demonstrate to city kids where good food comes from, and to encourage them to eat more fruits and vegetables—we developed 15 garden-based projects in elementary/middle schools in the Mississippi Delta, in Jackson, and on the Gulf Coast.

How we do it

A Community Steering Committee guides our work. An executive director, together with a staff of six, provides day-to-day management. CSC members each have their own “community constituents” who they work with and/or advocate for. These community constituents range from neighborhood associations to church groups to social justice and advocacy organizations—they run the full gamut of the community.

The diversity of ages, backgrounds, interests, professions, and community connections of the CSC members provide access to the pulse of each segment of Jackson and provides a voice for their issues, ideas, needs and concerns.

Going Forward

We are scaling up our work to focus even more on promoting the health and well-being of children by creating job training programs targeted to non-college bound high school graduates and other out of- school youth.

To do so, we began the process of becoming an affiliate of the National Urban League—this vital partnership, which was fully formed in February 2018, will promote employment equity.

Unemployment among teenagers and young adults are major issues in Jackson, especially during the summer, while unemployment among out-of-school youth is equally concerning. In 2016, approximately 600 Jackson high school graduates did not attend college and most had no plans or employment prospects.

In an effort to close this gap, Roadmap entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City of Jackson in to acquire a city-owned, soon-to-be-shuttered golf course and club house that we will now use to develop a job training program in golf course management designed to develop landscaping-related employment opportunities.

Out-of-school youth will be recruited during the course of the year and enrolled in a GED program provided by Hinds Community College prior to enrolling in the job training program. We will incentivize participant training to encourage consistent attendance and attainment of GEDs prior to transitioning to the program. Additionally, a job developer will work with non-college bound high school seniors in March of each year to prepare them for entering the training program.

Upon completion of classroom and on-the-job training activities, and with Roadmap’s oversight, some participants will bid on landscaping management contracts with local public school districts. Successful bids will result in permanent, unsubsidized employment for participants.

To leverage these relationships and also improve physical fitness, golf pros will develop a program for integration into the curriculum of the local elementary school, which is located next to the golf course. And, a concurrent physical fitness program will be incorporated into the program. Eventually, we hope these plans and resources can benefit the health of the entire community.

Partnerships are Vital

Any measure of success that we have achieved can be attributed to the long-term support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and to the large group of public and private sector members whose actions demonstrate that community partnerships play an integral part in achieving improved health outcomes.  We have the good fortune to have local chefs, hospitals and health professionals, church ministries, and community-academic partners involved.

Just one partnership example: we are the grant recipient in partnership with the Mississippi State Department of Health and the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). For this grant, the Department of Health provides staff resources and UMMC provides the required match for the project, which allows us to create a culture of breastfeeding among young women in Jackson.                                                                                              

Half of States Scored 5 or Lower Out of 10 Indicators in Report on Health Emergency Preparedness

Report Finds Funding to Support Base Level of Preparedness Cut More than Half Since 2002

 

Washington, D.C., December 19, 2017 – In Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism, 25 states scored a 5 or lower on 10 key indicators of public health preparedness. Alaska scored lowest at 2 out of 10, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island scored the highest at 9 out of 10.

The report, issued today by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), found the country does not invest enough to maintain strong, basic core capabilities for health security readiness and, instead, is in a continued state of inefficiently reacting with federal emergency supplemental funding packages each time a disaster strikes.

According to Ready or Not?, federal funding to support the base level of preparedness has been cut by more than half since 2002, which has eroded advancements and reduced the country’s capabilities.

“While we’ve seen great public health preparedness advances, often at the state and community level, progress is continually stilted, halted and uneven,” said John Auerbach, president and CEO of TFAH.  “As a nation, we—year after year—fail to fully support public health and preparedness. If we don’t improve our baseline funding and capabilities, we’ll continue to be caught completely off-guard when hurricanes, wildfires and infectious disease outbreaks hit.”

Ready or Not? features six expert commentaries from public health officials who share perspectives on and experiences from the historic hurricanes, wildfires and other events of 2017, including from California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

The report also examines the nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies, tracks progress and vulnerabilities, and includes a review of state and federal public health preparedness policies. Some key findings include:

  • Just 19 states and Washington, D.C. increased or maintained funding for public health from Fiscal Year (FY) 2015-2016 to FY 2016-2017.
  • The primary source for state and local preparedness for health emergencies has been cut by about one-third (from $940 million in FY 2002 to $667 million in FY 2017) and hospital emergency preparedness funds have been cut in half ($514 million in FY 2003 to $254 million in FY 2017).
  • In 20 states and Washington, D.C. 70 percent or more of hospitals reported meeting Antibiotic Stewardship Program core elements in 2016.
  • Just 20 states vaccinated at least half of their population (ages 6 months and older) for the seasonal flu from Fall 2016 to Spring 2017—and no state was above 56 percent.
  • 47 state labs and Washington, D.C. provided biosafety training and/or provided information about biosafety training courses (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017).

The Ready or Not? report provides a series of recommendations that address many of the major gaps in emergency health preparedness, including:

  • Communities should maintain a key set of foundational capabilities and focus on performance outcomes in exchange for increased flexibility and reduced bureaucracy.
  • Ensuring stable, sufficient health emergency preparedness funding to maintain a standing set of core capabilities so they are ready when needed. In addition, a complementary Public Health Emergency Fund is needed to provide immediate surge funding for specific action for major emerging threats.
  • Strengthening and maintaining consistent support for global health security as an effective strategy for preventing and controlling health crises. Germs know no borders.
  • Innovating and modernizing infrastructure needs – including a more focused investment strategy to support science and technology upgrades that leverage recent breakthroughs and hold the promise of transforming the nation’s ability to promptly detect and contain disease outbreaks and respond to other health emergencies.
  • Recruiting and training a next generation public health workforce with expert scientific abilities to harness and use technological advances along with critical thinking and management skills to serve as Chief Health Strategist for a community.
  • Reconsidering health system preparedness for new threats and mass outbreaks.  Develop stronger coalitions and partnerships among providers, hospitals and healthcare facilities, insurance providers, pharmaceutical and health equipment businesses, emergency management and public health agencies.
  • Preventing the negative health consequences of climate change and weather-related threats. It is essential to build the capacity to anticipate, plan for and respond to climate-related events.
  • Prioritizing efforts to address one of the most serious threats to human health by expanding efforts to stop superbugs and antibiotic resistance. 
  • Improving rates of vaccinations for children and adults – which are one of the most effective public health tools against many infectious diseases.
  • Supporting a culture of resilience so all communities are better prepared to cope with and recover from emergencies, particularly focusing on those who are most vulnerable.   Sometimes the aftermath of an emergency situation may be more harmful than the initial event.  This must also include support for local organizations and small businesses to prepare for and to respond to emergencies.

The report was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

Score Summary: 

A full list of all of the indicators and scores and the full report are available on TFAH’s website.  For the state-by-state scoring, states received one point for achieving an indicator or zero points if they did not achieve the indicator.  Zero is the lowest possible overall score, 10 is the highest.  The data for the indicators are from publicly available sources or were provided from public officials.

9 out of 10: Massachusetts and Rhode Island

8 out of 10: Delaware, North Carolina and Virginia

7 out of 10: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Washington

6 out of 10: California, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia

5 out of 10: Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana and Tennessee

4 out of 10: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania

3 out of 10: Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming

2 out of 10: Alaska

 Trust for America’s Health is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority.

 ###