LETTER FROM LEADERSHIP During July of 2021, the City of Baton Rouge, Office of the Mayor-President, was awarded a federal Advancing Health Literacy grant by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, to conduct outreach and help mitigate COVID 19 within vulnerable and marginalized communities, i.e., communities of color. The program was dubbed “BRAHL” or Baton Rouge Advancing Health Literacy and was award totaled $4,000,000.00 which initially included two minority-serving institutions, i.e., Southern University and A&M College’s Law Center, Baton Rouge Community College and one community-based organization, Young Adults for Positive Action a/k/a GROWTH Services of Louisiana. During April of 2022, after the untimely illness and subsequent death of then BRAHL Project Director, Dr. Joyce M. Plummer, the BRAHL Program was transferred to the Mayor’s Office of Community Development (OCD) and assigned to myself as the new project director. When looking at the mission of BRAHL—to serve vulnerable communities—along with the OCD mission “to provide decent housing opportunities, improved living environments and expanded opportunities for persons of low and moderate income,” the focus areas appear to both address Social Determinants of Health—factors that influence where a person works, lives and plays. The COVID 19 pandemic was a rude awakening that caused the nation—as well as citizens within the City of Baton Rouge to pause. We were ever so mindful of social distancing, the need to exercise good hygiene, including constant hand washing and to focus on our health in general. As the project director from April 2022 until the program’s end during February of 2024, I am happy to report that program goals were successfully met using a number of interventions and initiatives while building a strong partnership base. While COVID is now as commonplace as the cold or flu—in some respects—lessons learned were invaluable. I want to take this opportunity to thank BRAHL’s federal funder along with the many partners who assisted both the Office of the Mayor-President and OCD in furthering goals to address health literacy, through education and outreach along with many varied interventions and strategies, including educational training events, public service announcements, Metro 21 broadcasts, health fairs, free clinic and in other ways that you will witness on the following pages. While our goal was to reach 3,000 persons over a two-year period, we were able to reach more than 40,000 persons building partnerships with more than 45 community-based organizations and two minority serving institutions to further education around COVID 19, to offer free dental, vision and medical services, to share discussions on the state of Minority Health, promoting how to know their patient rights and have discussions with physicians and knowing when it’s time for a new physician, etc. Lastly, a special thanks is extended to the citizens of this great city for being receptive to healthy behaviors, concepts such as mindfulness, receiving literature on high blood pressure and maintenance and the like. You have each made the difference in this important work!
Daryl E. Blacher Grants Administrator for the Mayor’s Office of Community Development
BRAHL ANNUAL REPORT 2024 4
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