The Wichita City Council has accepted a $4 million grant working to improve health literacy, addressing health disparities, and improving health outcomes among racial and ethnic minority and vulnerable communities in Wichita.
The City is in partnership with the Wichita Black Alliance (WBA), Sedgwick County, HealthCore Clinic, Hunter Health, GraceMed, and the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita; the campaign will focus on underserved communities throughout Wichita.
The grant application was a collaboration between the City of Wichita and the WBA. Building on the WBA’s #FactsNotFear campaign, the grant will fund a community wide expansion of WBA’s initiative and will be administered through Community Connections Consulting Services.
The initiative will include marketing efforts, community outreach, and data gathering, and will connect the community to information and resources for food, COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, housing, and mental health services.
The Advancing Health Literacy to Enhance Equitable Community Responses to COVID-19 grant is administered through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health (OMH). The OMH awarded $250 million in grants to 73 local governments as part of a new, two-year initiative to identify and implement best practices for improving health literacy to enhance COVID-19 vaccination and other mitigation practices among underserved populations.