NH75OT000071

Houston Health Department - COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities

The City of Houston, with a population of 2.32 million, lies in Harris County, Texas. The city is entirely urban and, like other large urban areas, faces disparities in health and large inequities in resources and opportunities available to racial and ethnic minority populations.

Houston is also said to be the most diverse city in the country, with 45% Hispanic, 24.4% White alone, 6.8% Asian alone, and 22.6% Black alone. It also has 2.2% multi-racial individuals, as well as smaller percentages of American Indian and Alaska Natives alone, and Native Hawaiian and Alaska Natives alone.

The Houston Health Department (HHD) is committed to health equity and has developed and implemented plans that address access and equity for COVID-19 testing and vaccines. HHD will use a multilevel framework and the social ecological model to respond to the grant. HHD has identified a list of priority ZIP codes based on the top two quartiles of the CCVI index and will partner with existing and new partners in the community to address health equity in the priority geographic areas, in the context of COVID-19.

Since the City of Houston is in the early stages of the journey towards health equity, HHD will strategically select partners that will help the city advance towards equity. HHD will partner with grassroots partners that are smaller community-based organizations, faith partners, immigrant and refugee serving organizations, and those that can go door to door to assist outreach efforts. They will also partner with organizations that address some of the root causes of health equity.

The goals of HHD are as follows:

1) Create, educate, and build awareness of health inequities during COVID-19 and beyond through tailored, coordinated, and consistent myth-dispelling information and evidence-based, data-driven interventions among healthcare students and providers, multisector coalitions, community organizations, refugee and new immigrants, local government departments, and the public. This will also include training and building capacity among those that provide healthcare and services to the disproportionately affected racial and ethnic minority populations.

2) Leverage technology and systems to enhance capacity to collect equity-focused data on the Houston population, including the "hidden minority" populations.

3) Train and deploy a cadre of trained community health workers belonging to vulnerable communities and provide a more comprehensive wrap-around response during COVID-19 for those most severely impacted in our priority ZIP codes.

4) Build civic leadership capacity among residents of specific neighborhoods so that they can successfully organize and coalesce efforts to bring additional resources to their community.

5) Energize ongoing work on food insecurity to a) improving conditions in our priority ZIP codes and b) advancing policy-level interventions on food security.

Additionally, HHD plans to partner with our sister health department, Harris County Public Health, on some common priorities to further fuel the initiatives by leveraging resources from both departments, eliminating overlap, and maximizing impact. HHD will work with CDC and other partners post-award to develop the data management, monitoring, and evaluation plans to assess efficacy and improve quality.

City Of Houston

NOT APPLICABLE

93.354 - Public Health Emergency Response: Cooperative Agreement for Emergency Response: Public Health Crisis Response

CDC Office of Financial Resources (OFR) [HHS - CDC]

Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (CSTLTS) [HHS - CDC]

Houston, Texas United States

City-Wide

National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities (CDC-RFA-OT21-2103)

Amendment Since initial award the End Date has been extended from 05/31/23 to 03/24/25 and the total obligations have decreased 14% from $30,677,985 to $26,529,295.