Practice Title: Public Health as a Team Sport: COVID-19 Community Response and Equity Coalition (CREC)
Department: San Antonio Metropolitan Health District
Size: Large (Population of 500,000+ people)
State: Texas
Summary of Practice:
The City of San Antonio’s (COSA) Metropolitan Health District (Metro Health), a PHAB accredited agency, is located within the city of San Antonio and Bexar County which serves over 1.5 million residents as the 7th largest city in the United States and the 2nd largest city within Texas. Bexar County, Texas is a majority-minority metropolitan county with a population of 2 million inhabitants. Latinos account for three-fourths of the overall Bexar County population and three-fifths of its population identify as people of color (i.e., identifying as anything other than non-Hispanic white). Many of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) living in Bexar County’s disenfranchised neighborhoods are negatively impacted by socioeconomic inequities, and experience disproportionately higher rates of infection and/or death from COVID-19. These marginalized neighborhoods in San Antonio are in areas where hospitals and medical clinics are sparse, schools are underfunded, grocery stores offer fewer healthy options, and residents’ lack of transportation make it difficult to reach many of these needed facilities. According to the CDC’s community characteristics, 16.3% of Bexar County residents live in poverty, which is higher than the state average of 15.4% and the national average of 10.5%.
The COVID-19 Community Response and Equity Coalition (CREC) has served an important role in convening a wide variety of partners and stakeholders in supporting San Antonio’s COVID-19 response, and has accomplished several projects including:
· the creation of the COVID-19 Self Screening Online Survey;
· the creation of several educational documents for community members including the 3P messaging concept (Prevent, Protect, Provide);
· the creation of peer influencer social media campaigns;
· the generation of a public health policy risk matrix for social gathering;
· recommendations to County Judge Nelson Wolff regarding the re-opening/closures of bars within Bexar County; and
· providing recommendations to Metro Health leadership to update the COVID-19 progress and warning indicators.
Current CREC membership includes over 250 members representing more than 100 organizations across the public health, healthcare, academia, and community sectors. Metro Health has served as the convener and facilitator of the CREC since its inception and thrives in this ongoing relationship built on mutual respect and a desire to collaborate effectively to improve the health of the community and combat COVID-19.
Public Health as a Team Sport: COVID-19 Community Response and Equity Coalition (CREC)
Category
Healthy Living and Prevention