Building Neighborhood Partnerships and a Community Health Campaign on the Lower East Side, Manhattan

Two Bridges Neighborhood Council (TBNC) sought to increase positive health outcomes of residents and build a coalition of community partners for mutual long-term health goals. Through the Healthy Neighborhood Fund (New York State Health Foundation), TBNC aimed to improve access to affordable and fresh food, safe and walkable streets, and active community spaces throughout Two Bridges, Manhattan. Our team facilitated a workshop series to align community partners, build an action plan, and execute an engagement campaign to foster awareness about existing services and mobilize ongoing participation among residents, businesses, and local organizations.

Context

How might you align different organizations to implement an action plan and create a campaign to engage multi-lingual residents (in English, Spanish and Chinese) in neighborhood health programming? TBNC sought to create a unified and culturally relevant community engagement plan with partnering organizations for its Healthy Neighborhoods Fund Initiative.  Many residents live on fixed incomes and face negative health outcomes due to the environmental factors living near FDR drive and New York’s East River, yet there is a strong network of community organizations and historical landmarks that benefit residents.

Approach

Our team facilitated a workshop series with Two Bridges Neighborhood Council and partnering organizations to define project goals, obtain consensus from all stakeholders, and pinpoint existing resources to expand project outcomes. We developed a workshop series for coalition building across neighborhood organizations and to define the partnership’s mission, activities, and partners. In tandem with partners we developed our design scope and goals.  Using desired project outcomes, we developed a research framework to learn about existing perceptions of health and wellbeing from diverse sample of population to develop activities and graphic language for campaign. After gathering information from residents to design the campaign, we hosted focus groups to refine the brand and confirm a suite of activities for the campaign.

Outcome

We developed #2BHealthy, an 18 month outreach campaign to foster health awareness, mobilize community involvement, and connect residerns to programs that encourage healthy eating, physical activity and the use of open spaces. Digital and Print Campaign assets connected residents to programming, and a detailed implementation strategy guided the client to use communication tools and collaborate on an ongoing basis with supporting partners for a comprehensive neighborhood health initiative.