Community Outreach & Patient Empowerment
- Program Representative Interviewed: Sonya Shin, Executive Director
- Location: Gallup, New Mexico
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Program Overview: The Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) Program is a
collaboration between
Brigham & Women's Hospital, Navajo Community Health Representative Outreach Program, Navajo Area Indian
Health Service, and 638 facilities and partners in health. COPE's programs work to address SDOH and reduce
health disparities for the Navajo population. COPE's mission is to improve health by empowering communities
through 3 main strategies: community-based outreach, local capacity building and system-level partnerships,
and increasing access to healthy foods.
To improve access to healthy foods in the Navajo Nation, COPE administers food access programs such as the Fruit & Vegetable Prescription Program (Navajo FVRx), Healthy Navajo Stores Initiative (HNSI), and Growers Initiative (G.I.). FVRx engages local health clinics to provide free vouchers for fruits and vegetables to people in need, including pregnant women and families with children under age 6, in an effort to improve consumption of healthy foods. Families can use these vouchers in local grocery stores, which then send used vouchers to COPE to be processed for reimbursement.
COPE's programs use adapted evidence-based models and tailored materials and approaches to ensure they are effective in the Navajo community. For example, COPE tailored the Healthy Homes/Happy Homes childhood obesity prevention curriculum for the Navajo Nation by maintaining the core principles of the curriculum while incorporating aspects into the program important to the local community, such as hands-on skills training and demonstrations for traditional, locally grown food preparation.