New Haven Gets $4M Federal Health, Human Services COVID-19 Grant

NEW HAVEN, CT — The City of New Haven has been selected to receive a historic $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health targeted towards improving health literacy and COVID-19 mitigation and vaccination in our underserved communities, according to a press release from the city.

The award, it says, will provide "crucial resources in the fight against COVID-19 in communities of color, which have been disproportionately impacted by the virus."

The grant is part of the two-year, $250 million Advancing Health Literacy to Enhance Equitable Community Response to COVID-19 initiative, a part of the Biden/Harris Administration’s National Strategy for COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.

Health literacy is an individual’s ability to find, understand and use information and services to make health-related decisions for themselves and others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, low health literacy—exacerbated by social vulnerabilities such as high housing densities, poverty, and misinformation—has resulted in unduly poor COVID-19 outcomes among many minority groups. In New Haven, Black and Latinx residents received only 39% of COVID vaccines administered as of March 2021, despite composing over half of the city’s population.

The grant’s funds will go to New Haven’s Health Education and Literacy initiative, a community-driven effort led by the City of New Haven Health Department to address low health literacy in 10 New Haven neighborhoods that have been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic. The HEaL initiative will be focused on both short- and long-term health equity, including:

• Developing and distributing relatable and understandable public health information (posters, flyers, social media visual materials, videos, etc.) at community events, faith communities, and businesses.
• Deploying community health workers to canvass the neighborhoods alongside community partners to engage residents and equip them with necessary and accessible information about COVID-19 prevention, vaccines, and testing.
• Equipping frontline medical staff with health literacy skills that will ensure that residents receive clear, actionable information that enables them to become active and effective participants in their own healthcare.
• Connecting residents with community health resources to encourage regular, active engagement with preventative health services.
• Connecting residents with financial supports in order to address economically driven comorbid vulnerabilities that undermine health literacy and preventative health measures.

“This grant is going to go a long way in our efforts to fight COVID-19,” New Haven Health Department director Maritza Bond said. “We have made incredible progress, but we still see vaccine hesitancy, and there is still a lot of myth and misinformation out there. This grant initiative will help us make sure that residents have the accurate information that they need to make an informed decision. We have still some work to do before we reach herd immunity, and this grant is going to help us get there.”

This month, New Haven’s Government Alliance on Race & Equity Core Equity Team has gotten to work developing strategies to promote racial equity and increase opportunities for all within City Hall and New Haven more broadly. The AHL grant money, targeted more specifically at health equity, will complement the GARE Core Equity Team’s work as yet another facet of New Haven’s effort to tackle racial inequality.

“As we have seen in this pandemic, health equity is a matter of life and death,” New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said. “For all too long, many Black, Brown and Indigenous communities have suffered from limited access and low health literacy, and COVID-19 has made these inequalities all the more apparent. This ALH grant will help us make substantial progress in ensuring that there are equal opportunities and health outcomes for all New Haven residents.”