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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, local partners support Puentes Project developed at Arnold School
September 7, 2010
Julie Smithwick-Leone
Deborah Billings
A program developed at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health to improve healthcare for Latinos who live in Richland and Lexington Counties will be supported by nearly $1 million, thanks to a $499,930 matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to the South Carolina Research Foundation, and a team of local funding partners, including: the New Morning Foundation, the Sisters of Charity Foundation, the Knight Foundation Advised Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation, Palmetto Health, Providence Hospitals and Lexington Medical Center.
“Many of our neighbors who come from Latin American countries often face language and cultural barriers when trying to make healthy and informed decisions for themselves and their families,” said Bonnie Adams Kapp, executive director of the New Morning Foundation. “As a foundation that advocates for reproductive health education, we believe this promising project represents a major step forward in our community’s efforts to improve healthcare for the growing Latino population in South Carolina.”
The Puentes (which means “bridges” in Spanish) Project will build on the important work of the Perinatal Awareness for Successful Outcomes (PASOs) program of the S.C. Public Health Institute at the Arnold School. Believed to be the first of its kind in South Carolina, the Puentes Project will provide leadership training for Latino men and women as Community Ambassadors.
“The ambassadors will help bridge the cultural and language gap between the community, healthcare providers and policymakers,” said Julie Smithwick-Leone, the PASOs program director who led the expansion of PASOs from the Midlands into a statewide network. “They will listen to their peers describe their experiences, concerns, and ideas. Ultimately, they will meet with health care leaders and service providers to develop strategies for enhancing health services.”
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) award was made through Local Funding Partnerships (LFP), one of the Foundation’s most competitive annual grant-making programs. According to RWJF, only 10 projects were selected from 181 applications for the 2010 LFP awards. The LFP program supports community-based projects that develop new, collaborative and creative solutions to improve health for society’s most vulnerable people.
The Puentes Project will enable the Community Ambassadors to establish a bridge between Latino families and more than 20 different organizations, including hospital and healthcare services, faith-based and social service organizations, and university-affiliated programs.
Vince Ford, senior vice president for community services at Palmetto Health, said, “Palmetto Health is committed to reaching underserved and uninsured communities. As the Latino community continues to grow in our service area, it is important to us that we team up with other agencies to provide essential services to those who may otherwise be forgotten.”
“The leadership of the Community Ambassadors will be critical to the success of the program,” said project co-developer Dr. Deborah Billings, a faculty member in the Arnold School’s department of health promotion, education, and behavior and Women’s and Gender Studies Program. “Through Puentes, the ambassadors will conduct neighborhood meetings during which they will share health information with their colleagues, neighbors, and friends.”
The inspiration for the Puentes Project grew from two programs that seemed to lend themselves to a successful merger. One, a project that Billings led in Mexico, trained young adults to become advocates to improve healthcare among their peers. The second involved a pilot project that trained a team of 15 peer health educators as part of the PASOs program. The peer educators, motivated by their potential to make a difference in their communities, asked PASOs for more training in leadership and communication skills so that they could be more effective. The two ideas came together to form the Puentes Project.
“I’m very excited to be part of the Puentes Project,” said Janed Warr, a PASOs Program peer educator, “because it’s going to help me learn more about how to educate my neighbors and friends. I want to help other mothers like me connect to health resources and have healthy families.”
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org.
The PASOs Program of the South Carolina Public Health Institute works to empower Latino families to optimize maternal and child health within their social and cultural context through education, outreach, partnership, and advocacy. For more information, visit www.scpasos.org.
