Speaker 1: The O'Colony Y is a cause-driven charitable organization that has been focusing on, for many years, the social determinants of health in the communities that they serve. So the health disparity effects that we see in these communities is when we look at the data about hospitalization in Brockton and Stoughton communities. In particular, in Brockton, we see a high rate of hospitalization around diabetes. The data shows that the rate of hospitalization we get for diabetes is twice that of the state, and when we look at African-American black population, we see the rate of hospitalization four times the average of the state. So O'Colony got involved in public health along with other Ys across the nation, and we really wanted to focus on shifting the focus on the treatment of disease to more so about looking at how we can prevent those disease from happening and looking at a community as a whole to giving people more access to care. Ultimately, we don't want zip code, socioeconomic status, or race to dictate people's health outcomes.

Speaker 2: In 2014, the O'Colony Y, as the lead agency for the Healthy Communities Coalition, received funding from the Centers for Disease Control for REACH, Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health, and what that funding has allowed us to do is really provide chronic disease prevention and management programs in Brockton and Stoughton, Massachusetts, with a specific focus on the black and African-American population. We learned from health care providers about some of the challenges they face when dealing with patients from other cultures.

Speaker 3: The REACH Coalition is a group of probably 12 to 15 people from various organizations. We provide health care. We provide social services to Brockton and surrounding communities. The cultural competency trainings that we held in the Brockton community, they were actually a series of three workshops that were provided over the course of the last year, and the purpose of the workshops was to give health care providers working in the community some concrete tools and strategies in order to incorporate into their practice so that we could better connect with the various ethnic and racial populations in our communities.

Speaker 4: Our involvement in the coalition has benefited the patients of Signature Health Care. You know, our president and CEO, Mr. Kim Holland, really is so focused on providing resources to the community. And so by participating in the REACH initiative, we've really been able to provide additional services to the folks from our community, such as those free screenings, setting them up with chronic disease self-management programs, and things of that nature, things that maybe they would not otherwise be able to do and take advantage of.

Speaker 5: Brockton and Boone Health Center is a multicultural organization. We serve like close to 30,000 patients. Our patients face many, many challenges. Transportation, which is a big deal right now, and immigration, socioeconomics, language barriers, housing issues, social isolation. They face a lot of challenges.

Speaker 2: We also learned a lot about how much people rely on their church for health information.

Speaker 6: The vision of the church being as a community looking for comfort, for healing, for happiness, for the peace, for the peace of Christ, the peace and the love that Jesus brings us. So it's in a certain way being healthy. If you want to be good, to live in a good way, that's the place to be.

Speaker 7: I think because it's a community, when you have someone who is in a leadership role and calls them to live a healthier life, such as avoid smoking or getting exercise or eating the right foods, when that leadership person tells them that this would be best for you, I think they hear it differently than if someone, even a doctor, would say it to them. Because they have a sense of trust.

Speaker 2: Our goal through REACH and the mission of the church is really aligned, and together, working together, we really holistically address the health of the community. So another great example of how this coalition works together is we were offering a program at St. Edith Stein, the My Life, My Health, Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Program. That program had to be in Cape Verdean Creole or it wouldn't work, and we couldn't find any organization that had two trainers who could speak the language. Through the strength of the coalition, we were able to get one trainer from the Neighborhood Health Center and one trainer from the Good Samaritan Medical Center working together to provide the program.

Speaker 8: My Life, My Health program, it is an evidence-based program, chronic disease self-management program developed by Stanford University. It is a six-week workshop offered once a week. In this workshop, usually we cover many topics, for example, healthy eating, medication management, dealing with a difficult emotion, pain and fatigue management, and many other topics. The group setting, they motivate all the participants to support one another because it is a very interactive program. People who were once depressed with their health or people who, at some point, they lost control of their health, they are getting back on a better balanced lifestyle, becoming self-dependent, and they are creating a strong partnership with their health care providers.

Speaker 2: We are already seeing incredible results. We have some very statistically significant results in terms of people reporting coming more physically active, they are experiencing less stress, they are experiencing less sleep loss, and they are reporting less pain.

Speaker 9: I feel much better because I have been going to the gym, I have been going to the gym, I have been taking medication, I feel healthier, I sleep better now, I don't have as much stress

Speaker 2: This really is community-integrated health, where we are taking traditional medical systems and we are combining them with community-based agencies like the Y to work together towards this common goal of community health. The relationships, especially with the clergy, are really key to the sustainability of this work.