Hope Dispensary of Greater Bridgeport
As one of its first collaborative projects, HIA helped launch the Hope Dispensary of Greater Bridgeport in April 2011, a charitable pharmacy dedicated to serving low-income and uninsured individuals in the Bridgeport community. A member of the national Dispensary of Hope Network, the Hope Dispensary of Greater Bridgeport provides short-term and long-term medication assistance to eligible patients through a licensed pharmacist and trained personnel. The team is also bilingual in languages such as English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In Fiscal Year 2019, the Dispensary provided more than 5,120 patients with 9,709 medication prescriptions worth $1,607,814.
Get Healthy CT
Get Healthy CT is a coalition dedicated to promoting healthy lifestyles by removing the barriers to healthy eating and physical activity. Get Healthy CT was formed in the Greater Bridgeport region in 2010 through the work of the Healthy Lifestyles Task Force and has since expanded to include a chapter in New Haven and coordinated efforts in Greenwich. Our approach is to work together with community partners to identify existing resources and programs and use our website as the central connecting point for information and collaboration. Our community-wide coalition aims to “make the healthy choice the easy choice.”
Know Your Numbers
Since 2014, the Healthy Lifestyles Task Force has hosted free health screenings in local food pantries and other community locations. The mission of the Know Your Numbers (KYN) campaign is to empower community residents with information about their health status and educate them on how to reduce their risks of chronic disease. Since 2014, the KYN team has screened over 2,500 people in Bridgeport area food pantries alone, with other screenings being conducted by local partners in their own respective towns. These screenings often include body mass index, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, hemoglobin A1c, nutrition education, physical activity tips and referrals to local clinics for follow-up care.
Get Healthy Walk ‘n Talk
Get Healthy Walk ‘n Talk is a program in which the public is invited to come out and take a walk in their community with local healthcare professionals. During the walks, the healthcare professionals answer general health questions, while creating a safe, informal way to educate and connect with the community. The idea for Get Healthy Walk ‘n Talk came from our Greater Bridgeport GHCT Healthy Lifestyles Task Force. In 2015, one of our task force members suggested that we work with our healthcare partners to host walks that could not only help people increase their physical activity, but could also help build relationships between local doctors and community residents.
For those interested in planning their own walks, we have created a Get Healthy Walk ‘n Talk Toolkit
Community Care Team
The Behavioral Health Task force worked together to establish a high emergency department utilizer Mental Health Patient Community Care Team (CCT) and supported several public awareness campaigns to de-stigmatize issues around mental health and provide training to providers and support to patients and their families. The Access to Care Task Force has worked to increase the number of primary care and specialty clinic visits while reducing wait times for appointments, developed and implemented a brochure on the need for a Primary Care Medical Home and advocated for the use of Community Health Workers.
Smoking Cessation Programs
In partnership through the Healthy Lifestyles Task Force, staff from the health departments in Fairfield, Stratford and Trumbull have been trained to provide smoking cessation programs in the Greater Bridgeport region.