Dr. Elizabeth Towner recently received two awards to continue her community engagement work and partnership with Brilliant Detroit in the areas of pediatric obesity and COVID-19. A Community Impact grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund entitled “Community-Academic Partnership to Increase Community Action in Preventing Obesity in Preschoolers” will support expansion of the Brilliant Detroit HealthLink (#R-2101-148016). The aim of Brilliant Detroit HealthLink is to increase community engagement and community leadership in developing and implementing programs to address neighborhood-specific health needs and priority areas in the area of obesity prevention in the preschool years. This aim is achieved by applying two evidence-based, participatory approaches. First, HealthLink is a model for building local infrastructure to support ongoing collaborations between the community and researchers that generate and implement community-driven solutions to community-identified problems. In the original HealthLink (Queens Library HealthLink), community action councils were established at 20 library branches within the Queens library system. Each council developed their own approach for how to increase cancer screening and prevention in their neighborhood. For the Brilliant Detroit HealthLink, our long-term goal is to have one community action council in each of the 22 neighborhoods where Brilliant Detroit will have locations. We currently have one action council in the Morningside Neighborhood (BCBSF #002918.MG) and with the funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund will create new action councils in the Southwest and Cody Rouge neighborhoods. Second, community action councils are engaged in Boot Camp Translation (BCT) methodology, where community members translate medical-evidence into locally relevant and actionable language that serves as the basis for community-driven and implemented health campaigns. The Morningside community is currently developing a campaign to engage families in a series of healthy eating challenges that will also connect them with neighborhood food resources like the farmer’s market and community garden. The Southwest and Cody Rouge neighborhoods will develop campaigns that focus on unique needs in their communities.

A Health Education and Community Benefit grant from the DMC Foundation entitled “Community Action to Improve Health and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Pandemic” (DMC-G-202113631) provides support for the Detroit Community COVID Crushers to expand the reach and impact of their work to ensure community COVID-19 needs and priorities are being addressed. The Detroit Community COVID Crushers is an action council of 8 community members, one from each of the neighborhoods where Brilliant Detroit currently has a location. The group was established through a Special Cycle Eugene Washington Engagement Award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI #EAIN-00149) with the mission to develop a community-based system for rapid dissemination of evidence-based COVID-19 information and research. This goal was achieved by using BCT to develop and implement health campaigns targeting community COVID-19 priorities (e.g., keeping families safe during the holidays and coping strategies to manage COVID-19 stressors for kids and adults). In this next phase, the Detroit Community COVID Crushers will continue developing and implementing health campaigns and will expand their reach and impact through additional partnerships with the Wayne Mobile Health Unit and the Detroit Parent Network. They will increase the frequency of messaging by partnering with the Office of Community Engaged Research and the PHOENIX (The Population Health OutcomEs aNd Information EXchange) team to create Community COVID-19 Briefings that will include information like neighborhood-based statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths and COVID-19 resources. Briefings will then be shared using dissemination strategies the Detroit Community COVID Crushers select and with all involved community and academic partners. Finally, the Detroit Community COVID Crushers will collaborate with Detroit Parent Network staff to host “Parent Cafés” to provide the community with opportunities to talk, listen, learn, and support each other on community COVID-19 priorities and needs.