Video: East Side residents rally for better health
From lead paint in old houses to teen pregnancies, diabetes, obesity, lack of health care, smoking and drinking, East Side residents shared health concerns affecting the well-being of their community.
In a unique public forum at the Claude Black Community Center, neighbors formed small discussion groups to focus on matters close to their hearts, sharing them with health care advocates in the hopes to bring about change.
The meeting is part of the 2010 Bexar County Community Health Assessment, a process to profile the health of the community, look at behaviors that affect health and examine what leads to that behavior.
NOWCastSA streamed live video of the event here. Scroll down to see the video and the slideshow of data:
This event is a collaborative effort by CI:NOW and its sister entities, NOWData, which gathers and maintains vital databases at its website here, NOWCastSA and and NOWTech, which runs the city's technology centers. The three groups fall under the umbrella of CI:Now (formerly AACIS), a partnership of 25 entities that provides community information resources.
But the point of the meeting was also happiness, said Laura Mckieran, project director of the CI:Now, and professor at the University of Texas San Antonio Public Health.
“It’s not all about health, but about happiness, housing, arts and culture,” said McKieran, who presented a map of the health statistics to the community sorted into the East Side's 14 zip codes.
Much of the data was collected by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, and was produced for the meeting by the University of Texas School of Public Health, San Antonio. The data is showcased at NOWData's website here.
This meeting is part of the 2010 Bexar County Community Health Assessment, a process to profile the health of the community, look at behaviors that affect health and examine what leads to that behavior.
