Office of Minority Health

Grantee Information

Georgia Department of Community Health
2 Peachtree Street NW, 38th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-463-2289 (Phone)

The Georgia Office of Minority Health is committed to working in partnership with intrastate agencies, private/public entities, and minority and other community-based organization throughout Georgia as well as with federal agencies to improve the health of racial and ethnic minorities. The Office is focused on addressing cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Grant Project Information

The Minority Health Improvement and Legal Services Project (The MiLeS)
$140,000
Romero Stokes
404-463-2289
rstokes@dch.ga.gov

Abstract

The purpose of the MiLeS project is to extend public health legal services to minority and low-income individuals served by Albany Area Primary Health Care, Inc., in three of the organization's Federally Qualified Health Center primary care delivery sites. The project hopes the effort will address legal aspects of socioeconomic determinants of health affecting low-income, minority adults throughout rural South Georgia. It will introduce low-income patients receiving social and medical services from the three sites to public health legal services, provide interdisciplinary education to health care and social service providers to promote the prevention and reduction of socio-economic barriers to their patients' health, and foster their awareness of the root causes of health disparities and the constructive role lawyers can play to help address them. Finally the project will promote strong working relationships among health care, social services and legal professionals in other communities by serving as a model demonstration project for program replication.

The project expects to extend legal services to a minimum of 150 minority and low-income individuals and impact a minimum of 60 individuals per project year through direct education about health care and social services providers. It also intends to reach an additional 1,200 individuals through marketing and program outreach. To evaluate the project, staff will collect data, such as the number of individuals receiving health legal advice and the amount of knowledge disseminated to providers, including program specific literature. Client pre- and post-intervention satisfaction survey and annual provider survey will be used. The project will record, assess and disseminate evaluation data from the three service delivery sites.

Objectives

• Increased awareness, education, and outreach to address racial/ethnic minority health and health disparities problems
• Improved access to, and appropriate utilization of, health and other community-based services and systems through user-centered design for racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., health IT, culturally/ linguistically appropriate services, service provider education/ training, workforce diversity)
• Strengthened leadership and coordination to leverage resources and enhance effectiveness and efficiency of individual and collective efforts (including, but not limited to, research and data)