Public Health -- Boston Metro

Entre Nosotras is the first local program to use an important community social space, the beauty salon, to educate Latina women on treatments, risk reduction and preventative strategies for STDs.

Entre Nosotras/Between Us is a community-level reproductive and sexual health program for Latinas whose generosity within their intimate relationships places their lives at risk. Entre Nosotras promotes and reinforces healthy behaviors among Latinas at risk for HIV and other STDs. The program offers community-based access to risk reduction education and condom distribution through a network of beauty salons and other local businesses. Entre Nosotras also sponsors Women's Safety Net parties in community members' homes to teach women about health and available support services. Entre Nosotras trains Latinas from the community to facilitate the parties and includes education about reproduction and sexual health, domestic partner violence and healthy relationships. These Safety Net Parties are effective because they are gender appropriate, culturally meaningful and led by members of the community.

• Targets Latinas aged 18 to 45
• Serves 500 women per year through multi-session Safety Net Parties
• Funded by grants from the US Office of Minority Health and the MA Department of Public Health

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Public Health -- Boston Metro

Promoting healthy living to address the root causes of diabetes, asthma and obesity in underserved neighborhoods.

Boston Steps is a community mobilization effort to reduce the burden of diabetes, asthma and obesity for residents in seven Boston neighborhoods: Dorchester, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, Roxbury, South Boston, and South End. The program addresses three related risk factors: physical inactivity, poor nutrition and tobacco use. Boston Steps encourages people to make "5-2-1-0" lifestyle changes for better health by eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, limiting television viewing and video game playing to two hours per day, engaging in one hour of physical activity per day, and not smoking cigarettes. It works with neighborhoods, schools, employers, healthcare providers, restaurants and grocers to provide residents with information about and opportunities for healthy living. Boston Steps is funded as part of the Steps to a Healthier US program through a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

• Offers outreach and support to over 300,000 Boston residents
• Walkable Neighborhoods consortium team advocates for improved walking routes
• Healthy Restaurant Campaign awards restaurants with a logo identifying them as having healthy options if they meet criteria

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Public Health -- Boston Metro     

Boston has launched a pilot program to import less expensive drugs from Canada for its employees and retirees enrolled in Blue Cross Blue Shield.  Boston becomes the largest city in the nation (and second city, after Springfield, Massachusetts) to buy prescription drugs from Canada.  The program is expected to save about $1 million of the city's $61 million prescription drug costs in the first year.

• About 14,000 city workers, retirees and dependents enrolled
• The pilot program offers about 50 drugs
• Could be expanded to include more medications and to allow more city employees

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Public Health -- Boston Metro

DotWell is recognized as a model program for its ability to provide integrated clinical and non-clinical services in response to the complex needs of the Dorchester community while realizing significant cost savings. DotWell defines health as community wellness - strong families, clean air, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and a vibrant economy.

DotWell is a collaborative effort between the Codman Square Health Center (CSHC) and the Dorchester House Multi-Service Center (DHMSC) to guarantee high-quality clinical and community services across sites. The two health centers founded DotWell to provide them with infrastructure and support, reducing operating costs so that they could afford to offer innovative programs and initiatives that go beyond the exam room and address the needs of the whole person. In addition to providing administrative services to CSHC and DHMSC, DotWell supports cross-site public health programs that link clinicians with community organizers and educators. It also provides leadership and management to community service programs that operate out of the health centers, ranging from technology training and access, civic health, environmental health, HIV/AIDS outreach and care-management, parenting programs and after-school programs for youth.

• Offers services to over 41,000 Dorchester residents per year
• Public health programs include Asthma and Diabetes Case Management and the Breast Health Institutive
• Civic health programs include The First Generation College Bound Program, home-buying classes, and community walking groups

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Public Health -- Boston Metro    

E-Prescribing with a wireless PDA
(courtesy of www.webbchappell.com)

Tufts Health Plan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts teamed with ZixCorp® in October 2003 to form the eRx Collaborative, which promotes the widespread adoption of e-prescribing technology. ZixCorp®'s PocketScript software increases patient safety by safeguarding against prescription errors and saves time for doctors, pharmacists, and patients. It cross-references patients' drug histories with newly prescribed drugs to identify potential interactions and provides doctors with information on preferred, non-preferred, and generic medications. The eRx Collaborative is the first joint-initiative by major health insurers to help doctors adopt innovative new e-prescribing technology. Its goals are to enhance patient safety, reduce healthcare spending, and deliver a robust, secure e-prescribing system.

• Over 2,700 MA doctors agreed to participate by the end of 2004
• 27,000 e-prescriptions per week by MA doctors in December 2004
• Neighborhood Health Plan and DrFirst joined collaborative over the past year

Public Health -- Boston Metro     

The first online database that gives the public access to address-specific information about lead hazards.

Abt Associates and the National Center for Healthy Housing collaborated on the development of an interactive web-based database that will play a crucial role in the national effort to eliminate childhood lead poisoning by 2010. LeadSafeHomes.Info uses Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping to give the public easy access to address-specific information about lead hazards. While other programs have developed maps identifying high-risk zip codes or census tracts, LeadSafeHomes.Info is the first to make risks at the address level publicly available. Pilot programs in Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago went live in 2004.

• Housing risk indicators based on property age and lead inspection history
• Data on lead inspections updated quarterly
• Data on community blood lead levels updated annually
• Funded by the US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD)

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 School Lunch Initiative  

Public Health -- National/International 

Innovation

Berkeley, California becomes the first American community to use teaching about food as an educational tool in every school subject, from math to history.

Description

In July 2004, the Berkeley Unified School District signed an agreement with Alice Waters (chef, restaurateur, and organic food advocate) to found the nation's first program to integrate food into the public school curriculum. The goals of the program are to educate students on environmental issues and improve their health. Food for school lunch will be supplied by local sustainable farmers. The curriculum will integrate food and agriculture into every academic subject as educational tools. The program will be introduced at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in fall 2006 and will be implemented across the district over the next ten years.

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Public Health -- National/International   

Many schools and school districts have begun addressing the growing epidemic of childhood obesity by reconsidering the sales of unhealthy foods and beverages in school vending machines.  Last year, Stonyfield Farms, a New Hampshire-based organic yogurt company, began the nation's first healthy vending machine program for schools.  The vending machines sell organic juices, snacks, and yogurts.  Items sold must meet local and state nutritional guidelines and pass student taste-tests.  A dozen vending machines are operational in four schools in Massachusetts and three other states.  The idea has proven so popular that there is a waiting list of 600 schools interested in obtaining the machines.

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Public Health -- National/International  

The Baby Basics Program combines prenatal health education with culturally appropriate literacy training and support for mothers, fathers, and their prenatal care providers.  The cornerstone of the program is BABY BASICS: Your Month By Month Guide To A Healthy Pregnancy. Written to both a 3rd and a 6th grade reading level, the book's unique format was created in response to mothers' varied interests and skills. This comprehensive prenatal guide and literacy training tool takes into account the special health, economic, social, and cultural needs of low-income women. Years of research went into the making of BABY BASICS, and the book is continuously revised and updated to reflect changes in medicine and the needs of the community.

• Over 100,000 copies distributed to pregnant women nationwide
• Healthier pregnancies and safer deliveries amongst low-income populations
• Communication and partnerships between the medical community & social services providers
• Citywide programs in Houston, Newark, New York City, and Stamford CT
• Also available in Spanish (entitled Hola Bebé)

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 Voice-Activated Language Selection

Public Health -- National/International

Innovation

Instantly connecting doctors with qualified medical interpreters speaking over 150 languages.

Description

CyraCom International's new product, Voice Activated Language Selection, allows healthcare professionals to speak the name of a language into their telephone receiver and be instantly connected to a trained medical interpreter. The service will enable healthcare professionals to save crucial minutes in getting diagnosis and treatment because access to qualified medical interpreters is quicker. This technology will help end miscommunication with non-English speaking patients and ensure that they receive immediate attention.

• Access service through dual-handset Cyraphone® that connects to a network of interpreters
• Interpreters fluent in 150 languages and are on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Relationships with over 600 hospitals and healthcare networks

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 Access to Essential Medicines Campaign

Public Health -- National/International

Innovation

A campaign to give the developing world access to medicines necessary to fight infectious diseases.

Description

Over a third of the world lacks access to essential medicines because they are too expensive, unprofitable to produce or ineffective. Furthermore, drug discovery targeted at infectious diseases prevalent in the developing world has come to a standstill. In response to this crisis, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) established the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign in November 1999. Its goal is to find long-term sustainable solutions to the problem by lowering prices of existing medicines, bringing abandoned drugs back into production and stimulating research and development of new drugs for neglected diseases. The campaign promotes several strategies to lower drug prices, including increased generic drug competition, voluntary discounts on branded drugs, global procurement of drug stockpiles and local production of essential medicine. It also calls on companies and governments to find ways to bring unprofitable but medically necessary drugs back into production and to invest in the research and development capabilities of developing countries.

• Access EXPO, an interactive traveling exhibit, visited over 30 US cities in 2002 and 2003
• Collected over 200,000 signatures for 2003 petition advocating for R&D
• Publishes online magazine, It's A Different World Without Medicines, to raise awareness

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 Sister Cities International

Public Health -- National/International

Innovation

Sister Cities International's Africa HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program enables communities to cooperate across geographical and cultural distances to find innovative ways to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Description

For decades, Sister Cities International has connected American communities with "sister cities" from around the world to promote cultural understanding and global cooperation.  In April 2003, it launched the Africa HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program to create and support innovative community-based programs to address this public health crisis.  Six American communities and their "sister cities" in Ghana and Kenya are working together to develop and implement action plans that can have a lasting impact on the African communities.  So far, the "sister cities" have:

• Supported local efforts to use drama, poetry and song to teach about HIV and AIDS
• Designed programs to train potential educators, such as tribal leaders and employers
• Created school clubs, voluntary counseling programs and testing centers

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 Projeto Fome Zero

Public Health -- National/International

Innovation

Brazil's Projeto Fome Zero is considered the model for large-scale food security programs for its multi-pronged approach that meets the immediate and long-term needs of an impoverished and underfed people.

Description

In January 2003, Brazil launched Projeto Fome Zero (Zero Hunger Project), an ambitious national program that combines direct services to combat hunger with structural policies to prevent the underlying causes of poverty.  Direct service programs include food banks stocked with surplus from retailers and an expansion of the school meals program to feed the siblings of enrolled students.  The Zero Hunger Project supports agriculture by investing in rural infrastructure, offering financial and technical assistance to farmers, and purchasing produce for its direct service programs.

• Buys produce from over 150,000 small family farms each year
• Feeds 37 million youth daily through school meals program
• Distributed 650,000 emergency food baskets to starving families

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