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- Despite a lot of great work
that's been done over the years,
there are disparities in health that still exist
and are causing undue suffering
and problems for minorities and other underserved groups.
It's really important to learn about disparities,
document them, try to understand the fundamental causes.
Most importantly is addressing them.
And that's one of the things that we do here
at the Center For Health Promotion.
- We take that information
and we develop multilevel interventions,
to focus on helping the individual change their behavior,
helping the community be more health promoting,
and changing the environment
in which those individuals live
so that we can have better heath outcomes.
- We don't just sit in our offices
and think up interventions.
We really work with the community on a day to day basis.
And it's only with this kind of partnership, I think,
that we could have lasting impact.
Over twelve years ago, we developed a network
of communities, academic partners,
and primary care partners,
to work on cancer control efforts,
and with a goal of accelerating the use
of evidence based cancer control in communities.
- My name is Ruth Aria,
and I am the research coordinator for the CPRIT 211 program.
- Since 2009, we've been in a collaboration
with The University of Texas,
and The Center For Health Promotion.
And it's sort of a unique partnership in that
it's blending an academic approach with a community service.
And so 211 is able to use
evidence based practice on real call situations.
- They call, like normal, to get assistance for services,
for example, to pay utility bills or something.
And at the end of the call,
when they have been assisted by the INR specialist,
they are asked to do a survey
with some questions about their health.
And based on that, we can assess their risks
for certain types of cancers.
They are then provided with a navigator
that will assist them through the phone,
to obtain the services they need.
- What we try to do is educate the client
about the different cancers,
and the particular screenings that are available to them.
And we encourage and try to empower them,
so that they can be more proactive about their health.
And we help set goals with them.
At the very end, when we have helped them
go through the screenings,
and some of them have found out
that they actually have cancer,
and they call and they're just so thankful
that you were able to help them with that information.
And it just makes you feel really good about,
you know, so be it,
we were able to help this client with their resources.
- Not only are they provided the screenings themselves,
they're also given the knowledge about these screenings,
and how to prepare for them,
so that they can help themselves in the future,
and also friends, relatives, anyone else.
So I think it does have a wide reach.
- Many of the research projects that we have
here The Center, are school based.
And schools are just a great environment
to really reach children,
and adolescents, and their families.
- Sunnyside, Houston Texas,
it's one of the oldest African American communities
in the Houston area.
Sunnyside has a very high teen birth rate.
The We Can Do More initiative, is to prevent teen pregnancy.
We know that we need to do more
than just focus on teen pregnancy.
We need to focus on education in the community.
And so with funding from a local foundation,
we were able to facilitate a school based health center,
in a high school.
We're actually educating on sex, love,
and healthy relationships, and contraception as well.
- More students are coming in asking about contraceptives,
along with the parents.
And it have it readily available
for students if they need it.
- We've seen the teen pregnancy rate
itself decline in the school,
and so that is a huge success for us and what we're doing.
- In the past five years alone,
we've had 175 research projects,
that have impacted healthier lives, healthier communities,
locally, nationally, and internationally.
We like to say that we're outsmarting disease.
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- We are ready and able to apply technology
to reach our full potential.
- Some of the ways that we use technology
is to make learning fun.
And also to make it easy for people
who may not necessarily be able to read,
or have some limitations in health literacy.
And so we have programs for example,
that help parents understand the importance
of vaccinating their children against HPV.
And we also have programs that work with kids
that have asthma, on epilepsy, and on sexual health.
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- [Ross] It's Your Game, is a hybrid program,
and the program is designed to delay the initiation of sex
amongst middle school students.
So we designed a curriculum
that was a little bit more modern.
- Life Is A Game.
- There must be rules.
- Keeping it real, is just being yourself.
- And after a two year period,
the program was shown to be effective
in delaying initiation.
- We see tangible results, we see communities lives changing
with the work that we're doing.
Some of projects that I've been involved with personally,
we've developed interventions here in Houston,
that then are being used across the country.
So when you see that kind of impact,
when you see your programs
being used on a really wide scale
impacting other communities,
that's a really rewarding feeling.
- As a student, you get the opportunity
to apply the things that you learn in the classroom,
into an actual, specific, real world setting.
So you get to see these abstract, theoretical concepts
actually play out.
- The vision is impact.
Having the greatest impact on health
and quality of life that we can.
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