Bureau Of Harlem Neighborhood Health: The Health In Action Toolkit

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Impacting Community Health Outcomes through Participatory Grant-making

Health in Action is a multi-faceted approach to enhancing neighborhood agency and capacity to shape community health outcomes. Health in Action is an initiative of the Bureau of Harlem Neighborhood Health at the NYC Department of Health. In collaboration with local community partners, the Health in Action process provides funding to innovative community projects through a participatory grant-making process and builds capacity for local organizations through knowledge growth and skills development. It promotes participatory decision-making that puts power squarely in the hands of community members. 

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OUR STRATEGY

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First implemented in East Harlem, the Bureau of Harlem Neighborhood Health quickly saw the value in this program, and saw benefit in scalability to impact other communities across the city. They also wanted to be able to provide the lessons they learned and best practices established through the program’s experience in East Harlem. As such, the team engaged TYTHEdesign to support this replication through the creation of the Health in Action Toolkit. This Toolkit is considered to be the comprehensive guide to facilitating Health in Action, from replicating the process, to adapting it to maximize local impact across communities. The Toolkit incorporates sections that help to illustrate the success of Health in Action in East Harlem, as well as the operational work streams that support its approach, including participatory grant-making and capacity-building. To build the Toolkit, TYTHE developed a very collaborative knowledge sharing process, to ensure we capture the learnings of the Bureau of Harlem Neighborhood Health, but also the small details for program implementation. This included a series of interviews with the team, as well as focus groups with past program participants and funders to help illustrate the journey and experience for organizations who could support replication of Health in Action.

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THE OUTCOME

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Adapting the Health in Action Approach to Different Communities 

The Health in Action Toolkit is designed to be accessible and encouraging for organizations that are interested in implementing this approach. The Toolkit incorporates tools and resources that support further initiative replication, in addition to a handful of those resources being translated into Spanish. 

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Website and Webinars

TYTHE created a website (healthinaction.com) to support the distribution of the Toolkit and further illustrate how Health in Action works with a webinar including interviews and Q&A with past program participants and partners from East Harlem. The website features elements including the East Harlem story, FAQs around how the program is operationalized, and ways to share how you hope to shape health outcomes in your community through Health in Action. 

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Client: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH –  The Bureau of Harlem Neighborhood Health East Harlem)

Collaborators: Aliza Sarian, Claudie Mabry, Hillary Clark, Kristina Drury, Aly Millier (illustrator) and Hans Callenbach

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Year: 2021

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