Community Engagement

Health promotion and disease prevention (HP/DP) programs are critical in the process of eliminating health disparities.  Eliminating health disparities behooves us to use effective measures to influence research and practice so as to bring about positive programmatic changes. HP/DP also depends largely on effective communication of the different types of risks and benefits attributable to illness and health behaviors.

The extent of effectiveness of health communication is a two way street depending on the skills and techniques used by the communicator and the receptiveness and literacy level of the target individual(s). Thus, health literacy is important for HP/DP to be effective as well.  Being health literate enables health disparities populations to understand and engage in healthy eating and living habits in addition to effectively managing diseases.  More importantly, it improves access to critical health-related information, reduces costs of obtaining, processing and acting on this information, and improves quality of the provision of health care. We are making concerted effects to reach out to our community.