COMMUNITY PROGRAMS

Faculty, staff and students collaborate with a variety of community organizations providing health promotion services and activities in different venues: Schools and Head Start programs, churches, health centers and health fairs.  Below are some of the different community programs that we have:

Abrazos:

The Abrazos program is now in its fourth year.  The program has recently expanded and the Charleston County School District is now a partner in this program.  The intent of this program is to provide Spanish-speaking mothers and their 3-year old children an interactive family literacy program.  As the children are developing their school readiness skills (gross and fine motor skills, speech and language, and cognitive and social abilities), their mothers are focusing on learning English as a Second Language and participating in weekly health promotion classes.  The program meets two days a week at both Midland Park Ministries and Lambs Elementary School in North Charleston and serves approximately 16 Spanish-speaking women and their children at each of the sites. 

Franklin C. Fetter, Inc.

This Johns Island site is the primary health care provider for 5,000 individuals annually.  HHI faculty and staff work in collaboration with this center to provide expanded services for women and children that are culturally competent and linguistically appropriate. MUSC students participate in community outreach activities focusing on health promotion and prevention.  For more information, please contact the clinic directly at (843) 559-3676.

Providers:

Some of the services provided:

The Teen Health Leadership Project

Funded by the National Libraries of Medicine, the Teen Health Leadership Project is a collaboration between the College of Nursing at MUSC and St. Johns High School.  As the only public high school on Johns Island, St. Johns High serves a diverse population of students.  The Teen Health Leadership Project seeks to empower these high school students, providing resources and support for them to assist and serve their community.  The project provides health literacy training as well as leadership development skills, enabling the students to design and implement outreach projects to improve the awareness and use of quality health information in their community.  Through a series of experiential opportunities and mentorships, the Teen Health Leadership Project also seeks to encourage young people of diverse backgrounds to become health professionals. 

Portales de Salud

Started on July 1, 2009, Portales de Salud is a project that will use promotoras to disseminate information about teen health concerns and available resources to Latino parents living on Johns and Wadmalaw Islands.  Promotoras are community lay health educators that can be used to better understand the beliefs and attitudes of the Hispanic population and deliver information to them in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.  The first six months of the project will be used to collect community data and train the two promotoras.  Starting in the Spring, the promotoras will begin sharing the information they have learned with the Latino community on Johns and Wadmalaw Islands.  This project is funded through Communities In Schools.

El Sol

HHI faculty, Dr. Vanessa Diaz, provides health information via talk back radio for the Latino community on El Sol 98.9 FM. She is featured in a bi-weekly, hourly show Tuesdays at 8 am throughout the year.