Healthy Neighborhoods

Increasing health equity continued to be a major focus of LISC NYC’s work in 2019. Building off of a year-long planning process, LISC NYC and our partners secured funding to launch a new program, Bridges to Health Equity. This planning process resulted in a program design which will link health care organizations, health insurance companies and community based organizations to improve health outcomes in low-income communities.

Bridges to Health Equity is a home-based asthma intervention program delivered by community based organizations, with referral systems across all partners. Our community partner Make the Road New York secured a $400,000 two-year grant from the Kresge Foundation to support the launch of the program and LISC NYC was awarded a technical assistance grant from Green & Healthy Home Initiatives (GHHI) in order to secure Medicaid reimbursement to support this work in the future. These funds will allow our collaborative to pilot our multi-sector approach to implementing a community health worker home-based asthma intervention program in 2020. Evaluation of the pilot, to be conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine, is generously funded by a $100,000 grant from the Altman Foundation. We are thankful to our additional supporters of this work: Deutsche Bank and the New York State Health Foundation.

LISC NYC also completed the final round of our Two Shades of Green program, which supports our community development corporation partners to integrate green, healthy and cost-effective measures into their existing affordable housing to save money, improve the health of residents, and ensure the sustainability of their building portfolios. We assisted four partners to implement these interventions in 360 units. Interventions included: Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a safer and more effective approach to pest management, as well as the expansion of a tenant garden which will provide opportunities for socialization, physical activity, and access to healthy food for tenants. LISC NYC is thankful to Mizuho Bank and State Farm for supporting this work.