Stronger Partnership, Stronger Community (Stronger2)

IPHI is one of the project partners for “Stronger Partnership, Stronger Community: Using Health Literacy to Increase Resilience (Stronger²),” a new Fairfax County Virginia Health Department-led initiative to improve health literacy among local African-American, Black, and Hispanic communities.

Stronger² uses a community-based model to bring together trusted community voices to foster culturally competent health literacy. The program will improve health outcomes by cultivating an individual’s ability to find, understand, and use health information and serve the community in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.

In recruiting 90+ leaders from non-profits, the faith-based community, and historically Black fraternities and sororities to build the program, the interrelated objectives include:

• • Increase the number of COVID-19 vaccinated days [number of people vaccinated multiplied by the number of days vaccinated by zip code] for Black and Latinx members by 20% over what would have been expected otherwise.
  • Improve COVID-19 health literacy by 40%
  • Improve patient/provider communications by 30%
  • Increase community resilience by 20%
  • Increase social support by 20%

IPHI will train and certify project implementation partners on a standardized health literacy curriculum model/approach. The sessions will cover core elements of competency-based health literacy and topics relating to racial equity, cultural responsiveness, and trauma-informed care. Stronger² training will occur over several weeks and involves extensive study in health literacy, trauma informed care, and program evaluation. Following training, the group will build and implement health literacy programs and share the positive impact these make in the community. Some of the key health topics that will be addressed include COVID-19 vaccination, illness prevention, and health care decision making. Program participants will implement, share, and evaluate the results of their health literacy training and certification.

For more information on the Stronger2 project, please contact the Senior Program Manager Joanna Davis at 202.987.2829, or via email at joannadavis@old.institutephi.org.