NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Since 2020, Cortico and NYC DOHMH have worked together on multiple projects to gather and share underheard New Yorkers’ public health experiences, using those real voices to inform health equity strategy and COVID recovery efforts.
Listen in to Susan from the Bronx share the impact of participating in small-group conversations, including a shift in her level of vaccine confidence.
NYC Community Voices: COVID-19 and Beyond makes available 850+ firsthand experiences of COVID-19 vaccine confidence, with the goal of informing anti-racist approaches to increase vaccine uptake towards equitable COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
Since 2020, Cortico has partnered with offices at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) to help tell the story of public health in New York City. Cortico’s tools and methodology have been leveraged to capture individual perspectives at scale, building a network of engaged feedback channels and transparent actions within the community and from its leaders.
Cortico and NYC DOHMH have built an enduring relationship that sustains a powerful pipeline for the most underheard NYC residents to share their experiences, ideas, and perspectives on community health.
Challenge: Reduce health inequities
Take Care New York is an initiative driven by the NYC DOHMH to create a blueprint for achieving health equity in all communities, especially those with disproportionately poor health outcomes.
Solution:
The NYC DOHMH partnered with Cortico and 15 community partners to organize a series of conversations designed to elevate the voices of New Yorkers and understand the deep root causes of health inequities in their communities. For the first time ever at the DOHMH, storytelling was folded into the effort to support deeper understanding alongside surveys, focus groups, and other community gatherings.
“We now have more than 64 hours of conversations, reflecting the perspectives and priorities of hundreds of New Yorkers. When paired with our extensive quantitative data, these stories reveal the common ideas at the heart of our shared story of what creates health and a powerful roadmap to creating a New York City where everyone can be healthy, no matter who they are, where they live, or where they’re from.” – Elizabeth Hamby, Senior Director, Take Care New York
Results
This partnership resulted in a database of stories and experiences used to inform the Department’s neighborhood health strategies, creating a unique channel for public participation from underheard individuals and communities.
Challenge: Reduce COVID-19 inequities
About a year and a half after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NYC DOHMH developed a city-wide effort to eliminate COVID-19 inequities through outreach and education.
By 2022, the DOHMH was seeking a public health communications organization to support the NYC Public Health Corps (PHC)—a network of community-based partners created to identify and document individual experiences of the pandemic. To achieve this, the Department once again partnered with Cortico.
Solution
The intent of the project was to inform anti-racist approaches to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake towards equitable COVID-19 pandemic recovery. In partnership with Cortico, the PHC hosted recorded conversations about vaccination and to develop culturally relevant vaccine messaging to boost vaccine confidence.
Results
The result is a sustainable conversation portal that enables the PHC to provide proof of listening and share real stories of COVID-19. NYC Community Voices: COVID-19 and Beyond makes available 850+ firsthand experiences of COVID-19 vaccine confidence and community resilience from communities served by the PHC. The fear and frustration of the COVID-19 pandemic are evident, but so too is an appreciation of the progress made to protect communities and allow people to find new hope.
Visit the conversation portal: NYC Community Voices: COVID-19 & Beyond
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