Grant Partners

Cape Verdean Women United, Inc (CVWU) will increase access to services for marginalized intimate partner violence survivors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program will include care coordination services, evidence-based education on violence prevention, and specialized language services. One of the goals of the project is to create robust community dialogue around intimate partner violence and make the community aware of organizations that provide services tailored to ethnically and racially marginalized community members.

Neighborhood Birth Center (NBC) will lead a community-centered design for Boston’s first birth center through a series of charrettes to engage the community in envisioning a safe space for pregnancy and birth care. This feedback and input will lead to designing materials (renderings, videos, website) that will enable NBC to translate the vision onto the physical space. Through this initiative to develop and build a new model for birth centers that explicitly interrupts structural racism and heteropatriarchy, NBC will expand relationships with community members.

MABVI will pilot a partnership with The Dimock Center and New England College of Optometry (NECO) to increase access to low vision examinations and support services for patients with experiencing vision impairment who have low-income and are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color . The project will increase patient engagement with exams and comprehensive services resulting in patients being able to better manage activities of daily living and more fully adjust to living with vision loss.

The Immigrants’ Assistance Center (IAC) will outreach to members of immigrant communities in order to support increased testing and vaccination at places of employment and community health centers, provide direct personalized education to Black and Brown immigrants in their native language, and broaden awareness in the immigrant community about how to stay safe and slow the spread of the disease. Through this initiative, IAC aims to serve as a trusted source of information to immigrant communities about the importance of vaccination and provide guidance and direct services for every step along the way, from testing to vaccine follow-up.  

The Joint Committee for Children’s Health Care in Everett (JCCHCE) seeks to support new moms beyond the health insurance enrollment to ensure that they receive the help they need to navigate the complexities of parenthood. The pilot will support expectant/new moms, within each of the JCCHCE language groups--Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and English. Each mom will be assigned to a staff member who will work to determine their needs to support a healthy environment for mom and young child.

Plummer Youth Promise (PYP) will measure the impact of its evaluation practices to ensure that they incorporate dismantling injustices faced by marginalized populations. PYP will ensure that its evaluation practices collect demographic data in respectful ways, assess for discrimination-related trauma, document barriers to care, and report outcomes and identify other best practices.

La Colaborativa will expand the Chelsea Desea Sonar program to older teens who experience mental health triggers from the pandemic. Chelsea Desea Sonar (Chelsea Wants to Dream) is a mental health support program designed for newly arrived, unaccompanied, immigrant, and refugee children ages 9-13, teens, and their families and caregivers.  This project will address the cultural and societal barriers to mental health for youth of color and provide alternative mental wellness regarding the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Heart of a Giant Foundation (HGF) will test a community-based, culturally responsive care model which will address the social determinants of health experienced by Black and marginalized families and individuals in the Dorchester and Mattapan areas, with the goal of managing and preventing hypertension outside the clinical setting. The program will provide comprehensive health care support, health education and coaching, and will incorporate digital health technologies and remote health monitoring. The one-year pilot will provide nursing and medical services, healthy behaviors and lifestyle supports, community engagement activities, and mental health services to support patients in their journey toward emotional wellbeing and health lifestyles in a holistic way.

In collaboration with Health Law Advocates, the Rian Immigrant Center will launch a Medical-Legal Partnership for Immigrants (MLPI) with community health centers (CHCs) in order to increase the number of immigrants that can access urgently needed legal assistance to protect their interwoven health care and immigration rights. Rian and HLA will partner with medical providers (hospitals and CHCs) to identify and refer patients who need legal assistance from HLA and/or Rian to address health care access and/or immigration needs.

Quincy Asian Resources, Inc. (QARI) In partnership with Walker Therapeutic and Educational Programs (Walker), will offer a series of fun educational group activities for middle and high school students in the Quincy Public Schools (QPS) and a set of educational workshops for their parents or caregivers. This new program called “Getting the Teens Out” (GTTO) is born out of QARI’s overarching strategy to bring together QARI's linguistic and cultural competence with Walker's mental health expertise to benefit teen immigrant clients.

Resilient Sisterhood Project will assist the BCBSMA Foundation staff in conducting a focus group to understand the needs, concerns, and challenges facing organizations of color and organizations working in communities of color.  The focus group will also help the Foundation identify potential solutions to change the systems, policies, and structures that perpetuate racial inequities in health in Massachusetts.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Inc.  (BCNC) will support two staff members to attain their certification as Mental Health First Aid trainers. These BCNC staff will then facilitate a series of mental health first aid training to other staff and youth, adults, and caregivers.  This initiative will enable BCNC staff to become more attuned and better equipped to serve participants struggling with mental health issues. Ultimately Chinese immigrant youth, adults, and families will have increased access to culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services.

Somali Parents Advocacy Center for Education’s (SPACE) initiative will build resilience among Somali-American families and increase their understanding of the public health and health delivery system. SPACE will host workshops and conversations, training, and hands-on experiential learning about health, wellbeing, physical fitness, nutrition, preventive health care, and natural environmental physical supports.  These events will create a foundation to deepen culturally appropriate comprehension and advance new behaviors related to living a healthy lifestyle.

Codman Square Health Center (CSHC) will train and activate a corps of telehealth navigators toward the goal of integrating the telehealth experience into CSHC patient care model to provide a path to achieving better overall patient health. This initiative will help patients understand what to expect from a virtual visit, from check-in to follow-up. Telehealth navigators will help patients set up and understand how to access their online health information, access appointments, and communicate with their care team.

Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires (VIM) will articulate, evaluate, and promote its comprehensive healthcare approach to serve as a model in increasing access to quality care and eliminating structural racism and racial inequity in health for economically, socially, ethnically, and racially marginalized residents of the Commonwealth.  VIM believes that many elements of its care model help increase access and eliminate racism, and the Special Initiative grant will help the organization test this assumption.