TARRANT COUNTY, TX
Chronic Disease Prevention
Advancing Health Equity Linkages Program (AHELP)
Advancing Health Equity Linkages Program (AHELP) Tarrant County is a grassroots public health-founded community engagement program created to gain community and organizational input that will address the social determinants of health impacting Tarrant County communities; specifically, social connectedness and clinical linkages in neighborhoods with the highest social vulnerability indices.
AHELP Tarrant County is an intentional program which consists of a team of leaders who are creating meaningful collaborations across multiple sectors to include public health, social advocacy, medical and wellness, business connections, faith-based involvement, as well as literacy and outreach.
This program is currently being funded through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion through the Closing the Gap with Social Determinants of Health Accelerator Plans grant.
Our mission is to develop and implement a plan to increase awareness of and access to preventive and supportive care services to strengthen connections resulting in a reduction of chronic conditions and improvement of health-related quality of life across the lifespan in high social vulnerability areas of Tarrant County.
As a first step in the process, we recently hosted a Design Thinking workshop that convened more than 30 multi-sectoral agencies, that through a discovery process helped in identifying resources and gaps in services that may be occurring within our county’s most vulnerable populations. Since completing the Design Thinking workshop, we are preparing to seek input from the community through a series of listening sessions and surveys.
Tarrant County Public Health and our consultants will analyze the data gleaned from the Design Thinking workshop, listening sessions and surveys to find commonly stated issues and desired solutions regarding the social determinants of health that are impacting social connectedness and community and clinical linkages. Following, a proposal will be written for implementation, which will be submitted to the CDC for funding consideration.
Regardless of funding status, AHELP Tarrant County will begin working to address the issues found through our Design Thinking workshop and listening sessions. We are aware that it will take many years to implement the plan that the community wants and needs, but we are up for the challenge. We are hopeful that you will join us on this journey.
Our partners include:
