In summer 2017, BCC hired seven community members for a “community-based participatory research study”. BCC, the community members, and a professor of public health from Tulane University created a 60-question survey for neighbors. The survey included questions about peoples’ communities and lives, including their health, how they perceived neighborhood changes, and what businesses they would like to see on Broad Street. The community member researchers collected 200 surveys from people living in the neighborhood. BCC then conducted focus groups with neighborhood residents to gather more information in winter 2018. We are using this community feedback to shape every aspect of the ReFresh Collaborative’s work, as well as shape Broad Community Connections’ priorities as a whole.
You can read more about the ReFresh Neighborhood Data Project in the following briefs:
Why we display our data by race and ethnicity:
Disparities, or differences, in health across race and ethnic groups are due to long histories of policies and institutions favoring white communities over communities of color. While these systems are imperfect for everyone, communities of color often face especially deep, entrenched barriers in accessing quality healthcare, quality education, affordable and safe housing, as well as accumulating wealth, securing stable employment at a living wage, and much more.
Health does not exist in a vacuum; if a community does not have real access to quality resources and opportunities to thrive, this results in sickness and/or early death. Knowing this, we must show the difference in survey outcomes by race and ethnicity in order to identify the nature and extent of these disparities. It is our hope that by confronting these truths, we will all be more effective in addressing the roots of these problems and truly improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in our communities.